Superheroic rules dilemma, part 1

Okay, so I've got the start of a superheroic campaign using rules-light Fudge that starts this Sunday. Not only are my adventure notes rather sketchy, but I'm not even sure how I'm going to handle some important rules bits.

While I'm rules-light, I like to have a bare minimum of rules to support my style of play. I don't like to run entirely ruleless, because I'm bad at making arbitrary decisions. Even if I never compare a number on the character sheet to a roll of the dice, I like to have powers rated against each other so I can get a quick grasp on where the power fits into the grand scheme of things.

The big problem with Fudge here is that the preference is to use natural English adjectives to describe abilities… I'm a Superb swordsman with a Great sense of style, for instance. Those, under normal circumstances, rank +3 and +2 above 0 respectively. Zero is "Fair" and the center of the scale… the naming extends down to Terrible, which is -3 from Fair, and up to Legendary, which is +4 from Fair.

Now, if you consider Legendary to be the absolute maximum peak of human performance, and that's the last word used to describe abilities, it's obvious we have a problem when we start talking about a character that can life a hundred tons (or tonnes, take your pick). Fudge addresses issues similar to this with a set of rules called Scale, which are at the same time elegant and kludgey as all get-out.

Basically, Scale is just a giant number line with zero and Fair at the center. Except in some cases, you slide Fair around to a different value. Say, Ogres are just all around bigger and stronger than normal people… the Ogre "norm" might be +1. So instead of saying that Ogres start out at Good normally, you say they start at Fair, Ogre Scale. You slide Ogre Fair up to the +1 mark. Then when Joe Ogre and Joe Normal stand toe to toe, they both have a Fair strength… except Joe Ogre is Ogre scale, so his Fair is +1 instead of 0 like Joe Normal's.

It has its uses, but in general, it's a pain in the patooties. Because for Joe Normal and Joe Ogre to interact, I need to measure them on the same number line, and we've made the descriptive words unequal, so we basically just fall through to the raw numbers… Joe Normal has a 0 Strength and Joe Ogre has a +1 Strength. Blah. What's the point of using the neato natural-English words if the words fall down when it comes to actually using the rules?

Now, there's another aspect of Scale that works a little differently and is more useful, and that's scales that don't actually fit on the same number line. Something like, say, Stellar Class Starship Scale. You can be a Fair Stellar Class Starship, and Fair is equal to zero on the SCS Scale number line. And you don't know, or even care, where Joe Normal fits on that Scale, because Joe just can't compete… he loses every time, whether your comparing size, strength or firepower. So the two Scales have no meaningful overlap, so we can ignore the fact that, on some grand, massive scale, we could produce some directly comparable numbers, where Joe's Fair strength is 0, and the SCS Fair is around two-billion or so. With the spread of the dice being only -4 to +4, Joe would need a lot of positive modifiers to even get the SC Starship's attention.

Watch me smoothly transition into talking about superheroes…

Now, we know Joe Normal Scale doesn't meaningfully overlap with Stellar Class Starship Scale. But what about Planetary Class Starships? Or maybe Galaxy Class, System Class, and Dreadnought Class? Here, there is potential for overlap… some of these classes could meaningfully coexist on the same number line, meaning a Fair Planetary Class Starship might be able to compete with a Fair System Class Starship. This gets messy, just like Joe Normal and Joe Ogre… when you start comparing Scales on the same number line, that natural English just gets in the way, because what you really want to compare is the numbers. (Technically, even when you aren't using Scale, it's the numbers that Objective Fudge players are after anyway… but with the small number of adjectives, you can get to the point that you don't really think in terms of numbers consciously. Adding the extra layer of complexity that comes from Scale pulls you back into thinking about numbers.)

So what about this… Just declare, for ease-of-play and story purposes, that none of those Starship Class Scales overlap in any meaningful way. That means System Class Starships always beat Planetary Class starships. And, quite arbitrarily, there are no starships in between these two classes. There is a range of power within the class (Terrible..Legendary), but no range of power between the classes.) While that is technically silly when compared to real-life, it's a possible slight-of-hand that may not impact story at all. Think of it this way… you're flying a Firefly Planetary Class ship, and you're only worried about two things… do you have a chance against that Imperial Cruiser or not.

Now, apply that to super powers. What if, for reasons of ease-of-play and story, we decided that super strength "clumped up" into clusters. If you charted all the super-strength characters in the universe, you'd find they fall very neatly into four or five non-overlapping groups. This may seem a bit strange, but I've seen some comic fans argue that this is how it effectively works in comics. (I don't agree, but that's not important.)

So let's say we have the following non-overlapping Scales:

• Normal
• Heroic
• Super
• Cosmic

Heroic always beats Normal, Super always beats Heroic, etc. Extenuating circumstances can change this… multiple Normals combining their efforts might be able to win over a Heroic character, etc. And, of course, this doesn't describe the whole character… just individual abilities. So you could have Great Super Strength, but only Normal Superb Armor, for instance.

The question is, what effect does this have on the story, game play, and character behavior? Let's recall that I'm rules-light… I don't really want numbers, I just want to have tags of some kind that let me compare abilities.

First, do the players notice this big gap in between levels? There can't ever be a Strength that fits neatly between Heroic and Super, able to compete against both. You're either one or the other. There's plenty of room inside the Scale to differentiate characters, but no way to effectively compete with the Scale above you under ordinary circumstances. The players know it's there, but does it really matter? Considering how many arbitrary things we accept in the name of ease-of-play (like hit-points or armor class), I don't think it should be a problem in the area of verisimilitude, that is, the appearance of truth or realism.

The story shouldn't be hurt. We just happen to be picking stories that never involve characters that would fall into the gaps of the non-overlapping Scales.

How does it affect freeform, rules-light gamemastering? I think it will help a lot… it neatly, by design, pigeon-holes characters' abilities into broad categories, and then I only have to deal with comparing closely-related powers on a finer scale. I think this would be even easier to deal with powers all rated on a flat number line, because I never have to deal with those instances in which the numbers are close and I have to make a judgment call on a very marginal comparison.

Now here's my biggest issue… how does a mix of Normal, Heroic, and Super scales in the PC group and their foes interact? If the Centurion has Normal Accuracy, a Heroic Powerblast and Super Armor, does this work when his foe is mis-matched, with Super Accuracy, Normal Armor and Heroic Attacks? His foe always hits, but can never penetrate Centurion's defenses. But Centurion can never hit his foe, either. You can build characters like this in popular superhero games like Champions, but you basically just don't. In my years of playing Champions, I learned the importance of designing a well-rounded character… you might trade a little defense for a little more offense, but never to the extreme I'm doing here.

The issue here is, I like "realistic" superheroes, which Champions had a problem with… because of the balance issues, superheroes and villains in Champions rarely had normal-level Dexterity, and thus a normal-level Combat Value. Even if the nature of their superpowers didn't in any way support being super-dextrous, we all just overlooked the issue and took super-level Dexterity and Speed (especially Speed) because it was just too inefficient not to… if you didn't move often enough and rarely hit when you did, it didn't matter how powerful your Fire Jet was.

But in the comics, Cyclops had only one mutant power… he could fire force-beams out of his eyes. He wasn't super fast, he couldn't bounce bullets (though his later costumes were mostly bullet-proof), he couldn't run very fast, but he was pretty accurate because hitting his target was about as easy as looking at them. But Cyclops survived… mostly because his writers wanted him to, and because the writers could do a lot of mis-direction and never put Cyke in a clearly dangerous situation in which nobody was available to help him. Colossus would stand in front of him to stop enemy fire, other team-mates would distract the heavy-hitters, shield him with TK, ice, or whatever. Obviously, play that is going to support a Cyclops-like character is going to have to be very loose with the rules. Cyclops would never survive in Champions… he's way too unbalanced. And really, Cyke wouldn't survive in the Marvel universe if he wasn't a cog in a larger, well-tuned and oiled fighting machine called the X-Men.

So is this setup going to steer players toward making "all Super" characters to avoid being out-classed in any category? Or can good roleplayers cope with this and, assuming carefully managed villains and combats, avoid power escalation to avoid mistakes taking too great a toll?

I think I'm just going to have to run with it and see what happens. I might have to tweak or even completely scrap the idea as play progresses, but I think we're down to field research to find out what really happens.

There… over 1700 words and that only deals with one issue I'm having with rules-light superheroes. I still have to deal with Knockout/Killing damage, how to wing it with knockback (that comicbook staple in which attacks send people flying across the room), and dealing with fatigue and power batteries. (And they aren't just passing oddities… one character is built around powers that run on electricity, and has a power that intentionally provides a lot of concussive force so it can knock things around.)