Advancement: My issues with it

Games Sentinel Comics RPG
1

So, I'm making this a new thread as the most recent one I could find is well over a year old, and necro-thread-mancy is generally looked down on.

Looking through the preview chapters, I noticed one thing that I know my group is going to pick up on and will likely cause the system to be relegated to the 'on occasion when other games need a break' slot: Progression 'options'.

 

Now, I'm aware that, in the grand scheme of comics, heroes don't really 'grow' in power or abilities, but I know that most of the people in my Real Life gaming group are really into seeing tangible growth, be it numbers going up, or more skills listed on the sheet, or what have you. I, what seems to be unfortunately for SCRPG, fall into this sort of group. It's why, as much as I want to love FATE/Fudge, I find similar systems are good for short term (1-4 session, max) campaigns and little else.

I guess my question is, how would one show a character growing in ways that just don't seem to be represented in this system? What if my friend makes a non-magical ninja, who after a collection or two, decides to continue being a ninja, but pick up some ice magic on the side? What if I'm playing a mage who is slowly getting into magic based technology? What if someone wants to play a skill monkey-type character, picking up (and not putting down) skills collection after collection? Changing Details doesn't seem to really cover this sort of aspect, and Major Rewrite is obviously far too much. I know some would say 'but there's between issue bonuses for this' and sure, that's nice in the short term, but I'm looking at the long term. I'm looking at the 30+ issues, I'm looking at 10 collections. I'm looking at a game that does well for 2 collections, but most groups that aren't either FAR more heavily narrative on the narrative/mechanics scale are likely to drop off for other games after that.

I know some might suggest 'well if the character grows dull, major rewrite/make a new character' which....really isn't an option, at least for me. I like grand, 100+ session epics. I like seeing the erasure marks, of seeing the barely organized list of skills and abilities collected as a player realizes what might be needed that isn't covered by someone else in the group. This game just doesn't seem to have that. Sure, we might get some use out of changing details, or if we go long enough and someone gets horribly maimed, a major rewrite, but I doubt this will be the long term, multi-month system my local friends and I prefer.

If anyone can help sort me out, maybe not correct me so much as point out where I might be missing some details, I'd love to discuss this, because, like Fate, I really want to love this system, because I really love Sentinels, but I have this horrible feeling that my group will like the system, we'll finish the starter kit, and then likely agree that another system will be our goto for supers and future Sentinels Storytelling in our part of the woods.

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I understand your point of view on this. If I decide to implement “leveling up”, I’m likely to do it via the Collections. Using a Collection once per Issue, per Collection, is a pretty big bonus. Being able to say “Alright, this roll sucks, but change this die to this and now it rocks” is a literal game changer in some scenarios. So if I homebrew a leveling system, it will be at the expense of Collections. 

Off the top of my head, I would use a system like so:

1: Require the hero to have at least 2 Collections (They don’t change heroes around that much as soon as they are introduced)

2: When a Hero would receive a new Collection (at the end of six issues), they have the option to trade it in for a variety of things, such as

  • A new Power or Quality of their choice, at a d6.
  • Upgrade a die one size (Power, Quality, or Status) (which could change their hit point ranges)
  • A Yellow Ability they already qualify for from their Power Source or Archetype 
  • a Green Ability of their choice from anywhere (that doesn’t require a Power or Quality they don’t already have)

Then, as long as it is something hinted at or worked towards prior to this point, and standard GM Veto option, I think that is a good starting point for a leveling system. Just needs some power balance to fine tune it. 

Ideas?

1 Like
3

My thought was basically what Godai said, except that I'm also planning to allow someone to trade in 2 collections to upgrade a d6 power or quality to a d8, 3 to go from d8 to d10, or 4 to go from a d10 to a d12.

 

I think that this allows for a slow but meaningful accumulation of power, without pushing the bell curve too out of whack unless you play for *years* with the same characters.

4

That is already included in his suggestion. It is his second option: upgrade one die (power, quality, or status) by one size.

I'm not sure about changing status dice, since that more or less equates to a permanent buff, while powers and qualities are situational, but I suppose I could see how it would make sense; if a character who would previously fold under pressure (small Red die) underwent some climactic event that bolstered their resolve, they might be more steeled when things get rough, increasing their Red die.

 

Overall, I like this idea for advancement, at a rate of one advancement per collected trade, but I would like to propose a caveat: the improvement made should be based on the events of the trade in question. Maybe it's a hurdle they overcame, or maybe they noticed that they aren't able to do something they want to, so they train to do it off-screen. But either way, it shouldn't just be random min-maxing. It should be somewhat realistic character growth.

5

I’m also going to enforce no more than one d12 Power, one d12 Quality, and one d12 Status. No Uber-god heroes being the best in the universe at more than one thing. 

6

I believe Christopher made a point about advancement earlier: Superheroes in comics do not, in general, get more powerful as time goes on. Their focus and powers shift as time progresses, but they aren't strictly advancing, since they start out super-powerful.

 

From a game design perspective, if you start with a character with such awesome power, there's not much headroom to go up, especially since campaigns become boring if the charcaters can do everything.

7

This depends on the particular heroes, and the timeframe you’re looking at. I’m familiar with only a few Marvel heroes myself, but:

The early X-Men definitely gained in power, for a while anyway, as they trained. Iceman in particular learned several new tricks and even changed his appearance by hardening his ice coating, but Jean Grey also learned to use her powers in new ways, and Angel and Beast improved their skills. (Cyclops was also training, but aside from some minor improvements to his hand-to-hand skills, it didn’t really show.)

The Fantastic Four, too, learned new tricks. The Invisible Girl couldn’t even make forcefields at first, or make anything invisible other than her own body. Mr. Fantastic got even stretchier and The Human Torch learned to make different shapes and attacks, including his “nova” burst. The Thing didn’t gain a lot of skills, but his body kept changing; he’s closer to a respec than advancement.

Spider-Man got mostly minor upgrades, mostly due to tech. He invented different webbing formulas, improved the delivery system multiple times, and invented supplemental tools like the spider-tracer.

Now, granted, most of this improvement was early on in their careers. The ones that changed later on tended to be transformations, rarely simple additions. In 40+ years they did most of their improvement in the first 10, if not the first 5. They do continue to evolve, just more slowly. (I know Superman has been gaining new powers throughout his career, with a Super Nova power added as recently as a few years ago.)

For established heroes like the Freedom Five, sure, they shouldn’t really be improving much. They’ve left that behind them. But Daybreak absolutely should.

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Here's a thing I'd like to try that should help with Advancement. 

In addition to the things listed for Risky actions, I'd add something like

+ Power Stunt: Use a Power as part of a Basic Action to mimic the effect of another power. 

I've been re-watching the Flash on Netflix, and he does that all the time. "I use Speed to create a vortex of air or throw a lightning bolt or phase through a wall or time travel." 

So Flash's "player" doesn't buy Phasing or Air Control or Electricity Control. He just uses Power Stunts (and the GM lets him get away with all kinds of stuff). And as he gains collections, he can do Power Stunts for free. 

 

9

Except that the base claim there is false.

Most do, in fact, add new abilities as time goes by, until they get reset by a universe reset. 1970’s Spidey was competent than 1980’s spidey… and 90’s spidey was way more potent than 70s… but it’s slow, and mid-90’s, spidey got a reset…

The exceptions, however, are the peak - Supes, Batman, and Wonder Woman hit their peak, and stayed there, with little more to add. And in those cases, they got toned down in a reset, then grew back to power.

Also, Comic Book heroes don’t exist solely in Comic Books these days. And their power DOES grow, movie to movie, in the franchises.

What they generally don’t do is get better at their peak abilities. But, again, there are exceptions: Storm, Jean Grey, and Rogue from the X-men; Black Canary, The Flash, Green Arrow, Green Lantern from various DC…

Essentially, Flash doesn’t improve his dice any on his speed, but keeps adding more, and more, and bigger abilities to make use of that speed…
I’d say, however, that a number of DC characters have D16s or even d20’s in a peak ability. SC seems to be avoiding the cosmic power levels. And that’s a good thing.

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Coupled with this, look at how often heroes are powered up and powered down throughout comics.  Cyclops is a pretty good example of this, in many ways.  At his default, he's barely above a street-level hero, with a singular Blast ability.  During Avengers vs. X-Men, he became host to the Phoenix Force and was literally rewriting reality.  That's a huge gulf in power disparity (and, in SCRPG terms, likely a complete rewrite of the character sheet).  

Part of the issue here is that any major character in comics is precisely as powerful as the writer wants them to be.  While Batman might mow through hordes of mooks in one book, a single guy with a gun might take him down in another, depending on how the story unfolds.  It became a running joke in the Justice League cartoons (the Dini/Timm-verse) that Superman often got "Worf-ed" at the start of fights, simply to show how dire a threat the JL faced.  As the show went on, though, that changed to the point where Supes even noted (in the series finale) that he finally gets a foe that he can cut loose on:  "I feel like I live in a world made of cardboard. Always taking care not to break something, to break someone. Never allowing myself to lose control, even for a moment, or someone could die. [Punches Darkseid again] But you can take it, can't you, big man? What we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose, and show you just how powerful I really am. .  Is that an example of powers increase or simply a course-correction in terms of the script-writing?  Likely, just a little bit of both...

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The catch to all of this to me is that most* of the "new/better" powers/qualities/abilities for supers seems to be in their solo books. The hero needs something more/different than they've ever needed before, with no likely other sources of assistance, so they invent a new way of using their powers/qualities, or push themselves to the limit to get a boost in an area.

SCRPG seems to be intended for Team Books. I'm not as intense a comics fan as many people here, but my perception is that most of the team books feature the heroes using the well known powers and qualities in conjunction with their allies' to creatively defeat the challenge. There's rarely an instance of everyone getting individual power boosts (unless thats the specific plot device, maybe like the Injustice plot?), because everyone's intended to work together.

I'd personally love to see an "advancement" that works with tag-teaming specific powers/qualities together between teammates. After a particularly grueling fight, the heroes say "That time when you had the villain trapped in your oil, then I set fire to them was cool, we should practice that", and the first one gains a new ability that says something along the lines of "if the next person in the turn order uses Elemental Manipulation: Fire powers against this target, they use their max + min die" to show that the team has practiced this ability. Currently this could be done on the part of the second player by pushing a risky action, but it would be cool to see a "set-em-up knock-em-down" team-based mechanic among characters who have worked together.

Conisdering I'm mostly going to be gm for these anyway, I might just work with my players to do this anyway. =]

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It's also worth noting that this is the base game and they've said several times that they want to start off with "here's how the game works" content and add additional options as they go.

I could totally see a development later where they introduce Abilities that are built for multiple heroes to use together - like the Fastball Special was a specific, signature move for the Wolverine/Colossus team-up.

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I think you represent a Fastball Special by Colossus giving Wolverine a Boost and then passing initiative to him. 

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The way things are now, yes I agree. But that doesn't mean there isn't design space available for such things to be added in later products.

Colossus: Ability - Fastball Special (windup): Boost Wolverine using Strength. Use your Max die.

Wolverine: Ability - Fastball Special (delivery): After being boosted by Colossus' Fastball Special, Attack or Overcome using Close Combat using your Max die.

Something like that. Sure, Colossus could do that with pretty much anybody tough enough to survive landing on the other side and Wolverine could probably do it after being thrown by any other strong character, but having something specific to the two of them due to how often they'd performed the maneuver could be an interesting mechanic. Abilities are supposed to represent things that you've practiced and I think this sort of team-up move can fit into that category of action.

15

It could just be that Colossus has an attack that throws something, and the GM is willing to allow Colossus to throw Wolverine and do damage using him, pass iniative off to Wolverine, and then have him then make one of his attacks (like a double-claw attack or something). 

We don't need specific abilities for every thing a hero can do, if we can describe it in the context of generalized abilities. :-) 

16

For what it's worth, the Fastball Special isn't always just Colossus/Wolverine.  She-Hulk's done it, as has The Thing.

Maybe something like:

Fastball Special:  Choose an ally.  Boost that ally using Strength.  That ally immediately moves to an enemy within your visual range and makes an Attack using Close Combat against that enemy, using their Max die.

17

I agree completely with that last point. I think advancement will all depend on how the team fits in to the story; Are they established heroes or not?

I think as the game is built around teams of heroes, the main focal point for their advancement is usually slightly more control over their powers or new ways to use them. This should be more about using abilities than anything else really.

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In this session with Games Trade Media Christopher explains the advancement/progrsssion in the system if that helps at about the one hour and twenty nine minute mark of this https://youtu.be/DoHjb_MUwoI

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Christopher also said that the base game dose not include a "nemisis" mechanic despite it being a part of the card game but that they hope to add a Nemisis mechanic sub ststem to the rules set in a latter book, they could do a power increase rule set as described.

DC comics character from Teen Titians and Young Justice are also examples of heroes that have gained in power and skill in comics

The old TSR marvel game also mentioned She-Hulk at one point haveing a specific max lift (STR) and in later comics showing a (higher STR) by using Thing's whieght machine ( of course in that game noticable character advancment was super hard )

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Yellow-box, yes. Improvement was extremely slow. it was quite expensive to raise abilities, and the jumps were large.
AMSH (reddish box), it was 2-5 sessions per improvement, but that improvement was, if on the higher abilities, small; further, the costs were lower than yellow-box…
Heck, I’ve run 5 hour sessions of AMSH where the PCs managed to get upwards of 300+ Karma each… which is enough to raise secondary ability or an attribute a small bit…

And small but constant improvement is the appeal of a number of game systems; it was a good move by TSR to incorporate it into AMSH.

SC doesn’t have any way to make improvement all that small-but-constant. On the other hand, it’s far less table dependent. Tradeoffs.