39 minutes ago, themensch said:

Can we at least wait for the book to come out before we start putting bricks into our backpacks of posterior pain?

Riiiiiight. Apply that to me. If you read what I posted you would see that’s what I settled on. There’s simply not enough information. I find it utterly baffling that my opinion on exploding dice for super heroic traits is so contentious. I’m disappointed in some of what I’ve seen from GeneSys and will make that known. At no point have I insulted anyone or belittled the opinions of others. However, ridiculous fanboy battle lines are already being drawn to stymie any discontent over what little we’ve seen of the game. That’s stupid and unproductive. Good and bad feelings need to be known.

Most of us here have a lot of time with the Star Wars version of this system under our belts so it’s a safe assumption many of us, myself included, enjoy the system. However, I’m not going to assume its generic version will be great nor will I applaud the sparse (especially when compared to their other articles) details we’ve been given. I will give my opinions about what they have released, which to me, has been mostly “Meh...”. If others really like what’s come out so far, that’s wonderful. I hope I join the camp that’s eager and impressed with GeneSys.

On 21/11/2017 at 9:25 PM, Alderaan Crumbs said:

While I’m still interested in GeneSys I admit that the super characteristics leave me cold at first blush. It’s too inconsistent for my taste. If I have the GeneSys version of the Hulk, I should reliably and consistently pull of incredible feats of strength. This seems unlikely with super characteristics as written. Also, without seeing examples of how to interpret Triumphs (how many are needed to throw a tank, bus, etc.) it’s all, at this point, vague fiat.

The super stats where for normal human supers your batman hawkers & blackwidows not Hulk

3 minutes ago, Moglwi said:

The super stats where for normal human supers your batman hawkers & blackwidows not Hulk

Quote

Brawl checks punch opponents into the stratosphere, Coordination checks catch civilians falling several hundreds of feet, and Perception checks hear what’s going on miles away.

That doesn’t sound like Batman, Hawkeye, or Black Widow to me…

The article did specify that the characteristic mechanic was for both metahumans AND super normals.

I don't get where people are drawing the conclusion that the stat rule means unless it triggers the character fails, or that without it triggering all efforts with it are for naught? That just doesn't pass a common sense test, without getting into mechanics at all. A super stat wouldn't be terribly super if it was harder to accomplish tasks with that stat as opposed to non-super stats. That's just a big 'derrr' imo.

In regards to routine actions, if something is routine there likely shouldn't be a roll at all, regardless of this new rule.

2 hours ago, 2P51 said:

I don't get where people are drawing the conclusion that the stat rule means unless it triggers the character fails, or that without it triggering all efforts with it are for naught? That just doesn't pass a common sense test, without getting into mechanics at all. A super stat wouldn't be terribly super if it was harder to accomplish tasks with that stat as opposed to non-super stats. That's just a big 'derrr' imo.

In regards to routine actions, if something is routine there likely shouldn't be a roll at all, regardless of this new rule.

I don’t believe you fail the task it’s that your character’s “super thing”...when seen through the lense of the one big rule we’ve gotten about supers...is left to randomness. I don’t want my GeneSys Batman to engage with his Super Intellect and comes up short when there’s no in-game reason it should do so, at least not because I can’t reliably engage with it. It’s less “super heroic” and more “super heroic some of the time”, but in a weird way.

It seems like exploding triumphs are for those rare times when superheroes go above and beyond their usual powers. I'd save exploding dice for those times when powerful characters surprise us despite there ridiculous levels of power . Of course, The Hulk is always insanely Strong, but when he goes up against Blackbolt's scream that's an exploding triumph. Like in World Breaker when Blackbolt whispered, and hulk said,"I didn't come here for a whisper. I wanna hear you scream." It seems like FFG has come up with the perfect way to make those types of scenes from comic books come alive. That's how I see it from the little info we have so far. I should have my book in a few days. Nov 28th. Until then I'm just guessing like everyone else.

3 hours ago, Alderaan Crumbs said:

... GeneSys ... GeneSys.

All of the official material don't capitalize the S - it's just Genesys. Don't know if you have just not noticed that, are trying to make some sort of unclear point, or your keyboard just randomly capitalizes things, so I thought I'd point it out.

3 hours ago, TheSourceHD said:

It seems like exploding triumphs are for those rare times when superheroes go above and beyond their usual powers. I'd save exploding dice for those times when powerful characters surprise us despite there ridiculous levels of power .

It just clicked for me that this system would be perfect for those situations. This also works really well for cartoons in general for when a character fights on and pulls on a completely untapped well of energy and power at a pivotal point in a fight. It could work as a rather random "determination" mechanic.

One example that works quite well in my mind is Dragon Ball. When the hero pulls off a powerful blast or a new technique out of nowhere that knocks the villain down, dice just exploded.

5 hours ago, Alderaan Crumbs said:

I don’t believe you fail the task it’s that your character’s “super thing”...when seen through the lense of the one big rule we’ve gotten about supers...is left to randomness. I don’t want my GeneSys Batman to engage with his Super Intellect and comes up short when there’s no in-game reason it should do so, at least not because I can’t reliably engage with it. It’s less “super heroic” and more “super heroic some of the time”, but in a weird way.

Too be perfectly honest Super Heroes never come up short when they're doing their "super thing" so that's not a particularly realistic bar to set in a RPG imo.

I think another example of the "exploding dice" thing with say a super intelligent character like batman would be those times when the Joker thinks he has a perfect plan and for sure this time he will get away with it or finally "kill" the batman or get batman to kill or what ever his goal is with his most recent scheme and than before he can even START phase 1 Batman has him caught and with the recording of his plan and the joker's response is "that's just not fair" that is an example of Batman having even greater detective skills than normal because of exploding dice. Normally Batman would take a while to figure out the Jokers plan because "it's never simple with the joker" but on a rare occasion he gets him before he even starts.

Superman is a terrible character for RPG’s unless it’s a 1 PC game, being an “I win” button really puts the dampers on everyone else’s fun. (There’s only so many times your Superman absolutely has to cary a kryptonite spear for absolutely no reason at all) But I definitely agree basically any other supers game would be fine.

We can’t really speculate though until we actually understand the character creation process and how the modules fit together. It’s very possible there’s some perfect talent sets from right through the different Themes that fit all sorts of Supers.

10 hours ago, Popdart said:

It just clicked for me that this system would be perfect for those situations. This also works really well for cartoons in general for when a character fights on and pulls on a completely untapped well of energy and power at a pivotal point in a fight. It could work as a rather random "determination" mechanic.

One example that works quite well in my mind is Dragon Ball. When the hero pulls off a powerful blast or a new technique out of nowhere that knocks the villain down, dice just exploded.

I think a limited resource models this better. I think SW used Destiny points for this? Supers don’t just randomly nova, as you say yourself, they do when it’s dramatically appropriate. I suspect that is one of the things driving current concerns around modelling supers.

Let’s hope it’s just one part of the picture on how you model super heros. I feel confident it will be.

I wouldn't be surprised if superhero stuff isn't covered in any real depth until we get a splat dedicated to it. I'd bet there's not much more to it outside of the rules in the article, and some fluffy discussion about the superhero tone.

10 hours ago, Tom Cruise said:

I wouldn't be surprised if superhero stuff isn't covered in any real depth until we get a splat dedicated to it. I'd bet there's not much more to it outside of the rules in the article, and some fluffy discussion about the superhero tone.

I am inclined to think otherwise. After all what is the difference between a spell that creates a blast of flame and a superhero who breaths fire? Special effect. Therefore any ability is only defined by the tone/genre of the setting. The only thing that is in question is dealing with superhero scale such as street level heroes (solo batman), mid-level heroes (JLA Batman), or Superman level heroes. It doesnt take much page space to say a that a street level hero is # XP points with a starting ability max of Y and starting a mid range hero is #+50 XP, etc. Since this is narrative system and not a simulation (such just about any non-FATE superhero game), much of the heroes abilities are narrative or "fluff". It's possible that a superhero book might add a few more powers but I think it will probably focus more on their "official superhero universe" since Toolkits such as Genesys, Hero, Gurps, etc, are supposed to have everything defined except detailed settings. By way of example, the Hero System "superhero genre book" is just locations, NPCs, villians, tone, etc. There are no additional basic powers or rule mechanics. They do however have a book called POWERS. It is 300+ pages of nothing new. Instead it is hundreds of superpowers based on suggested origin/theme that are built using only powers and power modifiers in the core book. They also have several spellbooks for fantasy that are along the same line. They are meant for inspiration and those that don't want to build the abilities themselves.

If you are expecting a fully defined world of superheroes (or any genre), then I think you will be disappointed. If you are looking for how to use the NDS system to create heroic characters of a variety of power levels for your own world(s), at least until they release setting books, then I think this is exactly what you will get.

22 hours ago, Alderaan Crumbs said:

Riiiiiight. Apply that to me.

"We" implies a group of people. It's not all about you, pal.

Seems there are a lot of people willing to judge the book before they've even touched the cover, I think that's an unwise course of action.

20 minutes ago, themensch said:

"We" implies a group of people. It's not all about you, pal.

Seems there are a lot of people willing to judge the book before they've even touched the cover, I think that's an unwise course of action.

Yet, you quoted me. I find that more salient than grammatically analyzing the use of “we”. Besides, I’m not judging the book, while you, oddly, are judging people. Or at the very least they opinions. I’m critiquing what I felt was a disappointing reveal. I’ve been very positive about GeneSys and believe it will be a good product.

One possibility as to why we’re not getting a lot of articles with deep reveals is that FFG feels they don’t need to hype GeneSys . It’s been “hyping itself” for years with the Star Wars lines. If that is the case, they still need to keep the fans interested, even with less frequent and less detailed articles.

10 minutes ago, Alderaan Crumbs said:

If that is the case, they still need to keep the fans interested, even with less frequent and less detailed articles.

They have a forum with over 3.5k posts for a system that hasn’t been released yet, so I would suggest they have achieved that goal.

To be fair, super heroes tend to be extremely difficult to do in P&P RPGs. People often want to play teams like the Avengers or Justice League. Powers for those characters can have a huge range. This really doesn't work well.

When you have one player as a street level and another wanting to be a god, it can become very difficult to balance the challenges and make them all feel useful. Having everyone in the same power tier helps but even then, the usefulness of a character can range greatly based on a power and how creative a player can be.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Genesys does with super heroes but I doubt it will do anything to impress me. I've seen a lot of RPGs designed to play as super heroes and most of them are pretty bad. Many of them are among the worst P&P RPG mechanics I've seen.

2 hours ago, dbm_ said:

They have a forum with over 3.5k posts for a system that hasn’t been released yet, so I would suggest they have achieved that goal.

I think there are about 35 of us with 100 posts each.

10 minutes ago, fjw70 said:

I think there are about 35 of us with 100 posts each.

I am at 85 or so.. I'm doing my best.

12 minutes ago, TechnoGolem said:

To be fair, super heroes tend to be extremely difficult to do in P&P RPGs. People often want to play teams like the Avengers or Justice League. Powers for those characters can have a huge range. This really doesn't work well.

When you have one player as a street level and another wanting to be a god, it can become very difficult to balance the challenges and make them all feel useful. Having everyone in the same power tier helps but even then, the usefulness of a character can range greatly based on a power and how creative a player can be.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Genesys does with super heroes but I doubt it will do anything to impress me. I've seen a lot of RPGs designed to play as super heroes and most of them are pretty bad. Many of them are among the worst P&P RPG mechanics I've seen.

Yeah - as someone who has played and GMed Champions/HERO for 30+ years, almost all in superhero genre... I agree. I've learned some tricks over the years, but it can be really tricky to do.

52 minutes ago, fjw70 said:

I think there are about 35 of us with 100 posts each.

I’m only at 25or so. Guess I need to up my game!

54 minutes ago, c__beck said:

I’m only at 25or so. Guess I need to up my game!

Perhaps it will explode once the game is out

2 hours ago, Gallows said:

Perhaps it will explode once the game is out

Only if someone rolls a Triumph in their super stat…