So now that I have the book, something I have noticed right away is that overall, "development" is less about growth and more just a chance to shuffle things around. The character you have at the start is largely the character you'll always have, unless you swap something out, and the only growth is in adding on more bonuses and such you can come into a scene with.
If I'm reading the rules correctly, you'll never be able to add a power, quality, or ability.
Has anyone looked at house-ruling to add more options for character growth?
SCRPG isn’t meant to be played as a “how do I get more powerful”. That’s not really what it’s for. In comics, characters tend to be as powerful as is needed in the story. But if someone wants to home-brew some rules, there isn’t really anyone who will stop them. It’s just putting a different motivation / priority on gameplay than it is designed to support (advancement vs creating story).
For example, I created an intangible character who believes they are dreaming, and because they are a lucid dreamer, they can actually alter reality around them. They have no idea who they are or where they are from, though. At some point, that character will learn they are actually in a coma and find a way to wake up. At that point, I’ll rework the character, basically going through character generation over again, but this time looking at it from the perspective of this person who is actually awake but has a level of control of reality that’s a little different. This will involve different powers (e.g., they might no longer be intangible), qualities, etc.
Sounds like you already found all this, but for discussion purposes and so everyone has some context:
We can also use our collections to change our characters and the world in interesting ways. Take a look at page 249 for some examples of how that can be approached. And page 143 has the following options for changing things up:
Another aspect to consider is history. If PCs get more and more powerful, how do we explain characters like Heritage and Wraith who have been around forever but are no more powerful than any of the PCs? :-)
On Heritage and Wraith, I explain it as them being sample characters to demonstrate what's possible in the system, ;-)
It's not necessarily about gaining raw power for its own sake. Sometimes characters in comics do gain new tricks with their powers, better control over their powers, etc, without losing other tricks or abilities. Various comics do feature varied "power levels", and sometimes the writers don't even try to pretend that Street Level Guy is a match for Defender of the Multiverse. ;-)
And sometimes your concept just can't be fully realized at the "starting point", despite not being grossly overpowered or imbalanced, because of the quirks of a system, so being able to add a little bit would be useful.
Then there are characters that start out as "kid heroes" or "the newb team", and need some actual growth to reflect the same thing they usually go through in the comics, eventually.
I find that happens through a combination of two things: Collected Trades, and Narrative.
Collected Trades accumulate naturally over time, and those are far more powerful than they might seem at a first glance.
The narrative side of things is entirely subject to you, the player. Your character might have this d12 Power, or Quality, but that doesn't mean that the character can actually use all of that power or control it that well, or even make use of it properly.
I'm a little reluctant to share this, partly because this is my first time writing my own content as a GM and also sharing that with the world is vulnerable and difficult...but for the context of this conversation and this community being pretty positive and supportive, here goes:
I've written some house rules for my campaign about character progression and basically adding more options for collection and hero point usages. Scroll down to the Collections section for the specifics that are relevent to this thread: https://side-effects-to-side-kicks.obsidianportal.com/wikis/house-rules
Just to keep in mind, Scrpg comes with a GM toolkit to quickly come up with somewhat-balanced adversaries to deal with.
Powering up Heroes destroys that balance, and you'll need stronger opponents and more challenging , eh, challenges. Relatively, things always need to stay the same scale against each other for the game to stay interesting, but the mechanical setup has a natural limit to that escalation: at some point you run out of d12...
Scaling tasks and opponents with continually developing Heroes is a challenge in any RPG, hence there's such things as "This adventure is designed for level 6-8" in many systems.
Scrpg has the unique method of elegantly moving most of the weight that slows down the storytelling to the realm of The Narrative, and I've come to embrace that as a feature, not a fault, of this system.
Very shiny, drezzinator! :-D Thanks for sharing it! Not something I'm interested in personally, but happy to see it out there and available for folks who are. :-)
So far, I can say I very much like your interpretation of open-result challenge tests and the healing between scenes part. I would even say this is less of a house-ruling, but a rather well-thought out and concise guide on how the somewhat simplistic core rules might be applied practically. The rulebook is a bit lightweight on social and montage (ie. non-action) scenes, and this is specifically where these guidelines come in handy. I will definitely put a copy of that in my GMing notebook for reference.
I'm not fully convinced on the Hero point thing though (seems a lot more powerful than the regular generic boosts / floating bonuses), and of the permanent abilities from collections (what, in comics, is ever really permanent, except of course Uncle Ben's death?). But I suppose it's worth a try should the opportunity arise...
I agree that many of them will need some play testing and adjustments accordingly. I can report back with any findings once my players start using them. I also included a clause that the GM can adjust these effects just for this very reason :p
Another aspect to consider is history. If PCs get more and more powerful, how do we explain characters like Heritage and Wraith who have been around forever but are no more powerful than any of the PCs? :-)
There is power growth in SC. It's bloody slow. It doesn't up the dice any... it does, however, slowly ramp up the power.
That method is collection callbacks.
If you want Paul as Legacy to be much experienced, tack on 4-10 collections... those are a great way to make him feel really potent. He can't do more, but is way more consistent at doing it.
A bit off topic, but aramis' point (which I agree with more and more as I play more) brought up a question we had last night: in your reading of the rules, can you use more than one Collection on a single roll (e.g., for those effects like Max+Mid)?
The rules say nothing about it, but if you're willing to burn multiple collections in one go, you're probably really pressed for a small miracle, so I'd probably allow it (unless it becomes a regular exploit).
After all, comic narrative demands that 1 to a million chances have to pay off in 9 out of 10 times :)
I will say that I also would like to look into a different experience method, to gain/improve skills and powers rather than the Collected Trades, but that's also because the comic meta level stuff isn't really part of the appeal, for me. It's interesting, but not really a draw.
Then again, if I wanted to do the more conventional advancements, I'd do Savage Worlds or Fate (Wearing the Cape, specifically, for the latter).
Yeah, the meta-level "simulate a comic book" stuff isn't the big appeal for me, and SCRPG isn't really set up to handle different power levels... street-level is the same as galactic-epic. Sidekicks adventures is the same as world's greatest elite heroes. I'd be really tempted to run a lot of battles as "untimed", the status countdown seems to very much favor characters who don't need a few rounds to set up their abilities.
My players are not huge fans of the meta level either. But here's the thing: they're just words. If you don't like issues and collections, then every session is just a "session" and after six sessions you level up or get a skill level or whatever. Similarly, every 6 sessions, you can modify your character. In our group, the more I used the official terms anyway, the more they grooved to them.
I too have fooled with alternate advancement schemes, but I decided to hold off on even mentioning them to the players until they got really ancy about it. We're 6 months in of regular play and it hasn't happened yet. They do wish they could modify more, but they haven't looked for "moar power," because the way the game works, they don't need it.
I have yet to see a proposed house rule for advancement (including my own) that isn't going to eventually break the game after long term play. To fix the new problems, you'll have to change the way villains work and scenes are constructed, and at some point you'll wonder why you're trying to make a system do something it wasn't designed to do.
If you haven't played it yet with your own characters, I really recommend half a dozen sessions of play before you decide it needs to be fixed. YMMV.
But if someone wants to home-brew some rules, there isn’t really anyone who will stop them. It’s just putting a different motivation / priority on gameplay than it is designed to support (advancement vs creating story).