Despite Golden Heroes' clear Stan Lee-era Marvel influences, it has often been remarked that there is something ineffably "British" about the games' interpretation of superheroism. I'm not sure that is entirely true, but I will admit to having a certain affection for British superhero comics in a way that I don't have so much for the US variety, and would seek to incorporate that into my future games. But what is this "British" factor?
It seems to be rooted in a certain degree of cynicism and to large degree in British Sci-Fi (there was a great TV series and book in 2001 - both called SF/UK - which explored this in detail). While British comic writers may bemoan the way US writers tend to portray the UK, there is a certain basket of conventions that are downright idiosyncratic.
The two biggest cliches in British superhero comics are Arthurian legend and 1960s television. Merlin and Arthur crop up a lot (most notably with Captain Britain et al) but Doctor Who seems to have an even greater influence.
The reason for this is quite simple: the trappings of the televisual universe make for a great setting. Who wouldn't want to explore a world also inhabited by Quatermass, UNIT et al? Add to that the technicolour glory of The Prisoner, The Avengers and Thunderbirds and what you end up with is an instant shorthand that most people (well, males of around my age and older) can instantly identify with.
It is with that in mind that I found Kingdom of Champions, the only SHRPG British sourcebook I'm aware of, somewhat disappointing. It has a great reinterpretation of the Arthurian mythos to plunder and much of the emphasis on tone would be very valuable to the average US gamer, but it could have been so much more. There is a sourcebook waiting to be written out there that draws on all this to produce the ultimate British setting for a superhero game.
There are a number of examples of British Superheroics "done right" which in any campaign I run I would merrily steal from:
Zenith: sadly out of print and showing no sign of coming back due to a copyright dispute, this is one of a handful of 2000AD superhero series. Main stuff to pilfer: the intergenerational history (Grant Morrison fleshes out a world of superheroes linking events in the 40s, the 60s and finally the 80s), the Lovecraftian overtones (see also Quatermass).
Jack Staff: Paul Grist's "kitchen sink" approach to superhero comics can at times be a little hard to follow between issues. Grist draws not just from Marvel comics (the comic was reworked by Grist from a treatment for an abortive proposal he made to Marvel concerning their Union Jack character), but from British television and British comics from the 60s and 70s (these characters are further explored in Moore and Reppion's Albion although I have to confess to not having read all of this yet).
More than any other comic, Jack Staff "reads" like a particularly fun session of Golden Heroes, with its relatively uncosmic characters. Jack himself I guess must have Agility, Weaponskill (quarterstaff), Field Manipulation (kinetic energy - which he uses to add an extra punch with his quarterstaff) and Advantageous Background: Immortal.
Main stuff to pilfer: more an inspiration to pilfer really. Possibly the only superhero comic to feature both Dad's Army and Steptoe and Son.
Wisdom/MI13: Paul Cornell's recent run is sadly coming to an end, but it has been great while it lasted. What I've found most interesting about this comic is the way it looks at some common trappings of (British) superhero comics through the prism of secret services and national security. Formal pacts with the faerie realm? Departmental rivalry? There's lots of roleplaying potential here.
Other comics worth checking out:
Captain Britain: I have to admit to only reading the Alan Moore stories of the solo Captain Britain (and none of Excalibur at all). What I've read is great, vintage Moore/Davies stuff but a bit too cosmic for immediate adaptation to SqUK. There might be something in the Jasper's Warp storyline for consideration however.
Knights of Pendragon: I didn't get on with the second volume of this series at all - although it is ironically enough probably more Golden Heroes-esque. I enjoyed the first series, although I can't remember that much about it to be honest. The emphasis on Arthurian mythos is perhaps a little heavy-handed however.
Marvelman: Alan Moore's (and Neil Gaiman's) take on this character is nearly impossible to get hold of these days thanks to yet another interminable copyright dispute. Again, worth checking out as an example of British superheroics at its best, but not that useful from a gaming perspective.
Caballistics, Inc.: Not a superhero comic at all, but notable for the way it mashes together a series of iconic British mainstays (Quatermass again, plus Hammer Horror, Frankenstein and angel mythology to name but a few). Frankly, it's worth reading in its own right. Writer Gordon Rennie announced his "retirement" from comics to pursue other interests in 2007, but he has written a couple of Judge Dredd stories recently so there is a hope yet that he might finish off this series (currently in limbo).
Anyone else got any recommendations?
Sunday, 5 July 2009
Friday, 3 July 2009
Developing Squadron UK
Golden Heroes was one of the first games I ever bought, shortly after Game Workshop's edition of RuneQuest 2. If nothing else, it remains one of the best looking game books of the 1980s, designed as it was in homage to the comics from which it drew much of its inspiration (complete with "Comics Code Approved" logos and fake bar codes) and designed by many of the UK's top emerging comics artists of the day (including Brian Bolland, Brendan McCarthy and Alan Davies).
Unlike RuneQuest, the rules didn't go over this 10 year old's head and I played it regularly with my group of friends, ploughing through the introductory scenario Crossfire and the two seperately published scenarios Legacy of Eagles and Queen Victoria and the Holy Grail. Then, like so many Games Workshop games at the time, the new material dried up and I moved onto other things.
I retained a love of superhero gaming, eventually buying the second edition of Mayfair Games' DC Heroes. Both these games remain quite radically different from the roleplaying game "norm" yet were highly different in their own ways.
GH is appears to be most heavily influenced by the Marvel comics of the 60s and 70s and in particular the Stan Lee tendency to make the characters ordinary mopes complete with personal problems - good but flawed guys whose struggles out of costume are as great as the ones they face on the streets. DCH by contrast had to deal with a much wider power base (from trained humans like Robin to the cosmic powers of Superman and Green Lantern) and was focussed primarily on the comics of the 80s, which ranged from the universe destroying Crisis on Infinite Earths to the "realistic" Watchmen. To cope with such a wide range, the designers of DCH came up with an ingenious system based on exponential character scores instead of progressive ones (Strength 2 is twice as strong as Strength 1; Strength 10 is 500 times stronger). That way, characters capable of swatting out suns could be created and played relatively easily. Its other great innovation was to enable characters to make on-the-fly retrofits to their background and situation through a variety of "omni" skills and powers. For example, a character with "omni-contacts" could find a contact in almost any organisation simply by spending the requisite number of "hero points".
I liked DCH's cleverness and played a number of games with the system. But if I'm totally honest, I found it a little too clever for its own good. The gaming experience was rather cold and the system tended to render everything as somewhat abstract. As a system for resolving conflict with every conceivable type of superhero, it was great. As a game, it lacked heart.
By contract, GH's greatest strength (and arguably weakness) was that it was all heart. By modern standards, the rulebooks are incredibly low in detail and amount to little more than a character creation system (mainly focused on powers), a combat system and a campaigns system, yet all three of those features are relatively unique. Character creation is largely random and encourages players to develop the rationale for their characters. The system is so open-ended that the players' creative input into the game is much greater than in most games. Combat is very much influenced by the comics themselves, eschewing realism in favour of rendering the fight into a series of "frames." The campaigns system cleverly renders all that Stan Lee-style melodrama into a series of campaign ratings and "daily utility phases" (i.e. periods of time each week that characters must spend patrolling, training or sorting out their personal lives).
After spending 20 years stuck in Games Workshop hell(i.e. GW still assert their copyright but won't exploit it - a situation that has plagued many classic games that emerged in the 1980s) (I've been contacted by Simon Burley who has asked me to point out that isn't the situation - apologies for the mixup), GH has now re-emerged as Squadron UK. Written by GH co-designer Simon Burley, this is effectively the same game rewritten so as to avoid any copyright infringement. Thus far, it has gone through three iterations: a bare bones reworking of the basic rules (free), a PDF of the full rules and now a somewhat spruced up print version. Having had the PDF version for a couple of years, I recently splashed out on the print version and am pleased to see that design-wise it is much improved.
The game is essentially the same one I first bought 25 years ago. There are some minor changes to some of the powers and character creation has been somewhat streamlined, but nothing earth shattering. As an independently produced designed to bring back a much loved game back into print, this is fair enough.
What would I put in a second edition? Nothing earth shattering. The simply, freeform nature of SqUK is one of its greatest strength. But there are a few things I would like to see fleshing out:
Powers: In fact, the list of powers given in the basic SqUK handbook is pretty comprehensive. Combine that with the flexibility of the system (the "energy" in Energy Attack can be pretty much anything; Cybernetics could be magical items, etc) and the fact that really "cosmic" powers such as time or dimensional travel are best left for the Referee to explore within the game itself (no game has ever made such powers seem more mundane than DCH) and it is hard to think of many gaps in the system. Most other systems have "powers" which are little more than add-ons to existing powers (BRP/SuperWorld has an "extra energy" power for instance).
Having looked through the rulebooks of the other games I have to hand - DCH, SuperWorld and Villains and Vigilantes - there is very little I would add. There are a number of extra powers which could be added, but most of them would be little more than refinements of powers already covered by SqUK. Iceman's powers, for instance, are mostly covered by a combination of Energy Attack (Ice) and Field Manipulation (Cold). There is perhaps a slight problem with terminology here: ice is clearly not a form of energy and coldness (even temperature) is not a form of field.
What there could perhaps be is a little more in terms of guidence for linking various powers together. SqUK has already taken a step in this direction by allowing people who have rolled Energy Attack to take Energy Immunity and Energy Reflection as extras once they reach Grades 2 and 3 respectively.
The only wholly new power I've thought of adding is "Mutant" - i.e. a range of extra powers brought on by physical changes (extra limbs, vestigal wings and tails, etc.).
Both Magic and Psionics could benefit from a judicious pilfering from the average generic roleplaying ruleset, but there is a danger of adding too much emphasis on these abilities as they would encourage players to all play Doctor Stranges.
Skills: the skills "power" has undergone the greatest revision in the transition from GH to SqUK but has not been especially improved. The change has been to go from a generic list of 9 skills, some of which were drastically weaker than others to the same short list and a set of vague guidelines differentiating between "major" and "minor" skills and with each grade of the power you can either have one of the former or two of the latter. That's fair enough, but in its current form it isn't clear what should be regarded as major or minor. Instead of being a potential source of inspiration, I find this power in its present form can be a real stumper. What the game needs is a Big Table of Skills (although people should still be free to choose skills if they would prefer).
Careers: linked to that would be a Big Table of Careers. The game's existing system of character creation is excellent - I'd like to take it one step further. Such a table - which would also include suggested campaign ratings and skills suitable for each career - would be a great ideas generator.
Motivation: this is an idea lifted straight from DC Heroes. In DCH, Hero characters have to pick one of four possible motivations: Responsibility of Power, Seeking Justice, Thrull of Adventure or Unwanted Power (villains have to pick from Mercenary, Nihilist, Power Lust, Psychopathic and Thrill Seeker). My reason for wanting such a system is simply that it encourages good roleplaying. Combined with SqUK's own system of Campaign Ratings, I think this would be a very valuable addition.
Quirks: This is a catch-all term for a variety of different drawbacks, weaknesses, flaws and restrictions that a hero might have. Again, to take a few ideas from DCH, a character might suffer from an irrational fear, rage or a strange appearance. DCH game even lists marriage as a drawback (which makes sense, if you think about it). I wouldn't have SqUK adopt as strict a system as DCH - instead I'd have a Big Table of Quirks, many of which would simply add colour to the character.
As far as I can see, there would be two main objections to having such a system in SqUK. The first is that it would conflict with the freeform nature of the Referee and Player sitting down and working out the rationale together. For this reason, I would certainly agree that any randomly generated list of quirks would have to be optional. What's more, the Referee should be free to reject any that don't suit the rationale or impose any that do. In that respect it would be a way of strengthening the system rather than moving away from it.
The second potential objection is that it would lead to a culture of minimaxing. This is a common problem with games that rely too much on leaving players to design their characters. For this reason, quirks certainly shouldn't lead to extra rolls on the powers table under any circumstances.
Hero Points, expanded: In SqUK, heroes with a particularly high personal rating are given Hero Points which they can use to change the result of a die roll, once per adventure. DCH takes this concept much further, making Hero Points a catch-all system for giving characters an edge in limited circumstances (in fact, the whole system of character generation is based on Hero Points, but that's another story). I would suggest a new system somewhere between the two.
After particularly climactic adventures, I think it would be appropriate to reward characters with Hero Points (the cosmos smiles on them). In addition, particularly harsh Quirks (certainly not all of them) should come with a Hero Point as compensation. On the other end of the balance sheet, I see a greater use of Hero Points as a way of resolving one of the aspects I've never been entirely comfortable with in the system. GH, and SqUK after it, has always had within it a rule that Heroes facing death can spontaneously acquire new power refinements and even whole new powers, simply by paying the cost of developing them retrospectively. This has always seemed a little vague to me: why should this be available to just any character? The solution, it seems to me, would be Hero Points. Get-out-of-jail-free cards like this should only be available to characters who have the Hero Points to pay for it.
You might want to restrict this to respect the existing rule about only Heroes with high Personal Ratings being able to spend Hero Points. The rules as they exist in the rulebook for example, might still only apply to characters with high personal ratings; for everyone else they would only work in life-or-death situations.
I'd be interested to read what people think about these ideas.
Unlike RuneQuest, the rules didn't go over this 10 year old's head and I played it regularly with my group of friends, ploughing through the introductory scenario Crossfire and the two seperately published scenarios Legacy of Eagles and Queen Victoria and the Holy Grail. Then, like so many Games Workshop games at the time, the new material dried up and I moved onto other things.
I retained a love of superhero gaming, eventually buying the second edition of Mayfair Games' DC Heroes. Both these games remain quite radically different from the roleplaying game "norm" yet were highly different in their own ways.
GH is appears to be most heavily influenced by the Marvel comics of the 60s and 70s and in particular the Stan Lee tendency to make the characters ordinary mopes complete with personal problems - good but flawed guys whose struggles out of costume are as great as the ones they face on the streets. DCH by contrast had to deal with a much wider power base (from trained humans like Robin to the cosmic powers of Superman and Green Lantern) and was focussed primarily on the comics of the 80s, which ranged from the universe destroying Crisis on Infinite Earths to the "realistic" Watchmen. To cope with such a wide range, the designers of DCH came up with an ingenious system based on exponential character scores instead of progressive ones (Strength 2 is twice as strong as Strength 1; Strength 10 is 500 times stronger). That way, characters capable of swatting out suns could be created and played relatively easily. Its other great innovation was to enable characters to make on-the-fly retrofits to their background and situation through a variety of "omni" skills and powers. For example, a character with "omni-contacts" could find a contact in almost any organisation simply by spending the requisite number of "hero points".
I liked DCH's cleverness and played a number of games with the system. But if I'm totally honest, I found it a little too clever for its own good. The gaming experience was rather cold and the system tended to render everything as somewhat abstract. As a system for resolving conflict with every conceivable type of superhero, it was great. As a game, it lacked heart.
By contract, GH's greatest strength (and arguably weakness) was that it was all heart. By modern standards, the rulebooks are incredibly low in detail and amount to little more than a character creation system (mainly focused on powers), a combat system and a campaigns system, yet all three of those features are relatively unique. Character creation is largely random and encourages players to develop the rationale for their characters. The system is so open-ended that the players' creative input into the game is much greater than in most games. Combat is very much influenced by the comics themselves, eschewing realism in favour of rendering the fight into a series of "frames." The campaigns system cleverly renders all that Stan Lee-style melodrama into a series of campaign ratings and "daily utility phases" (i.e. periods of time each week that characters must spend patrolling, training or sorting out their personal lives).
After spending 20 years stuck in Games Workshop hell
The game is essentially the same one I first bought 25 years ago. There are some minor changes to some of the powers and character creation has been somewhat streamlined, but nothing earth shattering. As an independently produced designed to bring back a much loved game back into print, this is fair enough.
What would I put in a second edition? Nothing earth shattering. The simply, freeform nature of SqUK is one of its greatest strength. But there are a few things I would like to see fleshing out:
Powers: In fact, the list of powers given in the basic SqUK handbook is pretty comprehensive. Combine that with the flexibility of the system (the "energy" in Energy Attack can be pretty much anything; Cybernetics could be magical items, etc) and the fact that really "cosmic" powers such as time or dimensional travel are best left for the Referee to explore within the game itself (no game has ever made such powers seem more mundane than DCH) and it is hard to think of many gaps in the system. Most other systems have "powers" which are little more than add-ons to existing powers (BRP/SuperWorld has an "extra energy" power for instance).
Having looked through the rulebooks of the other games I have to hand - DCH, SuperWorld and Villains and Vigilantes - there is very little I would add. There are a number of extra powers which could be added, but most of them would be little more than refinements of powers already covered by SqUK. Iceman's powers, for instance, are mostly covered by a combination of Energy Attack (Ice) and Field Manipulation (Cold). There is perhaps a slight problem with terminology here: ice is clearly not a form of energy and coldness (even temperature) is not a form of field.
What there could perhaps be is a little more in terms of guidence for linking various powers together. SqUK has already taken a step in this direction by allowing people who have rolled Energy Attack to take Energy Immunity and Energy Reflection as extras once they reach Grades 2 and 3 respectively.
The only wholly new power I've thought of adding is "Mutant" - i.e. a range of extra powers brought on by physical changes (extra limbs, vestigal wings and tails, etc.).
Both Magic and Psionics could benefit from a judicious pilfering from the average generic roleplaying ruleset, but there is a danger of adding too much emphasis on these abilities as they would encourage players to all play Doctor Stranges.
Skills: the skills "power" has undergone the greatest revision in the transition from GH to SqUK but has not been especially improved. The change has been to go from a generic list of 9 skills, some of which were drastically weaker than others to the same short list and a set of vague guidelines differentiating between "major" and "minor" skills and with each grade of the power you can either have one of the former or two of the latter. That's fair enough, but in its current form it isn't clear what should be regarded as major or minor. Instead of being a potential source of inspiration, I find this power in its present form can be a real stumper. What the game needs is a Big Table of Skills (although people should still be free to choose skills if they would prefer).
Careers: linked to that would be a Big Table of Careers. The game's existing system of character creation is excellent - I'd like to take it one step further. Such a table - which would also include suggested campaign ratings and skills suitable for each career - would be a great ideas generator.
Motivation: this is an idea lifted straight from DC Heroes. In DCH, Hero characters have to pick one of four possible motivations: Responsibility of Power, Seeking Justice, Thrull of Adventure or Unwanted Power (villains have to pick from Mercenary, Nihilist, Power Lust, Psychopathic and Thrill Seeker). My reason for wanting such a system is simply that it encourages good roleplaying. Combined with SqUK's own system of Campaign Ratings, I think this would be a very valuable addition.
Quirks: This is a catch-all term for a variety of different drawbacks, weaknesses, flaws and restrictions that a hero might have. Again, to take a few ideas from DCH, a character might suffer from an irrational fear, rage or a strange appearance. DCH game even lists marriage as a drawback (which makes sense, if you think about it). I wouldn't have SqUK adopt as strict a system as DCH - instead I'd have a Big Table of Quirks, many of which would simply add colour to the character.
As far as I can see, there would be two main objections to having such a system in SqUK. The first is that it would conflict with the freeform nature of the Referee and Player sitting down and working out the rationale together. For this reason, I would certainly agree that any randomly generated list of quirks would have to be optional. What's more, the Referee should be free to reject any that don't suit the rationale or impose any that do. In that respect it would be a way of strengthening the system rather than moving away from it.
The second potential objection is that it would lead to a culture of minimaxing. This is a common problem with games that rely too much on leaving players to design their characters. For this reason, quirks certainly shouldn't lead to extra rolls on the powers table under any circumstances.
Hero Points, expanded: In SqUK, heroes with a particularly high personal rating are given Hero Points which they can use to change the result of a die roll, once per adventure. DCH takes this concept much further, making Hero Points a catch-all system for giving characters an edge in limited circumstances (in fact, the whole system of character generation is based on Hero Points, but that's another story). I would suggest a new system somewhere between the two.
After particularly climactic adventures, I think it would be appropriate to reward characters with Hero Points (the cosmos smiles on them). In addition, particularly harsh Quirks (certainly not all of them) should come with a Hero Point as compensation. On the other end of the balance sheet, I see a greater use of Hero Points as a way of resolving one of the aspects I've never been entirely comfortable with in the system. GH, and SqUK after it, has always had within it a rule that Heroes facing death can spontaneously acquire new power refinements and even whole new powers, simply by paying the cost of developing them retrospectively. This has always seemed a little vague to me: why should this be available to just any character? The solution, it seems to me, would be Hero Points. Get-out-of-jail-free cards like this should only be available to characters who have the Hero Points to pay for it.
You might want to restrict this to respect the existing rule about only Heroes with high Personal Ratings being able to spend Hero Points. The rules as they exist in the rulebook for example, might still only apply to characters with high personal ratings; for everyone else they would only work in life-or-death situations.
I'd be interested to read what people think about these ideas.
This blog
This blog is intended as a miscellenea of thoughts regarding role playing. As a thirty-something weaned on Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, I spent much of my formative years gaming. As I've got older, I retain fond memories of those days yet struggle to find the time. Nonetheless, I still spend a significant amount each year splurging on roleplaying books and spend a lot of time contemplating how I might get back into the hobby. This blog is an attempt to help that along.
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