[RPG]: Supers Week - Truth & Justice RPG, reviewed by Samaritan (4/5)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12954.phtml

Jonathan Combs's Summary:

T&J is a sterling system for pick-up-and-play or short-term games, though a bit shaky at the knees when used for longer-term games. However, the fun to be had more than compensates for the need to help it along a bit in such a case. Overall, an excellent product and value.

Go to the full review for more information.

[Tim Gray]

That's a good first review, Jonathan!

Just a quick note to clarify re HP and MAX, though. You receive HP for various things, like doing something notable, acting on your Motivation, being the victim of a Revoltin' Development in the interests of the story, etc. Each time you receive HP you get a tick for your MAX, and when ticks equal current MAX it increases by 1 and the ticks reset. (The book gives the choice of slow ticking, one per HP award, and fast ticking, one per point gained.)

[C.W.Richeson]

Good first review, Jonathan! You do a good job of conveying the group's problems in actual play, which is something a lot of AP reviews gloss over. Thanks!

In your actual play what powers other than Super Speed struck you as having some problems?

[Samaritan]

Originally Posted by Tim Gray

That's a good first review, Jonathan!

Just a quick note to clarify re HP and MAX, though. You receive HP for various things, like doing something notable, acting on your Motivation, being the victim of a Revoltin' Development in the interests of the story, etc. Each time you receive HP you get a tick for your MAX, and when ticks equal current MAX it increases by 1 and the ticks reset. (The book gives the choice of slow ticking, one per HP award, and fast ticking, one per point gained.)

Ah, right you are, I had failed to make that distinction. We were using the fast ticking method. I perhaps could've been clearer as to how to gain HP, too.

Thanks!

[Samaritan]

Originally Posted by C.W.Richeson

Good first review, Jonathan! You do a good job of conveying the group's problems in actual play, which is something a lot of AP reviews gloss over. Thanks!

In your actual play what powers other than Super Speed struck you as having some problems?

Hey C.W.-

Thanks! In some cases, it wasn't so much the power, as it was trying to emulate something we wanted to do and not being sure how to go about it.

To be honest, most of our issues came from 'tweaking' powers during creation- we found it difficult to design, say, a powerful but extremely limited defense (say Armor that works only against cold), or power that works well but infrequently (a la an activation roll). It wasn't clear to us how to emulate such things within T&J and still maintain balance. Stunts had the capacity to be quite unbalancing if we weren't careful. For instance, my super-genius mutant character had a spin-off stunt (from Super Intelligence) called Find Weakness... if I could beat a certain target number (designated by the GM) vs. an opponent, my character could ignore the defenses of that target for an attack next round. Since 'to hit' and 'attack' rolls are kind of rolled up into one, that made the next roll a fight-ender in most cases. We stopped the game, though, before we had a chance to amend said stunt (granted, as it was spin-off, it was at a Poor Quality- imagine if I had bought it as a signature stunt!).

My mentioning of super scale was not entirely clear- Powers normally do super scale damage against normal *objects*, not characters. To make it super against living targets requires a hero point.

Super Strength is naturally super scaled against living targets, making it a bit unbalanced in our game.

Likewise, the notion of super-scaling mental powers when most players don't think to include some kind of mental defense (a Quality such as willpower wouldn't help against super scale) can be fairly devastating in use.

Those are the two most immediate examples; they're easily remedied (with a bit of house ruling), but Super Speed? When coupled with, say, Super Strength, it became enormously useful to the point where the GM was pressured to cap Super Speed at a certain point.

To be clear, these kinds of things don't break the system to the point of uselessness, since they're easily modified. It just seemed to us that, 'out of the box', some powers can be more useful than others.

[yorrick]

Jonathan,

Nice review. Providing a summary of what you see as the strong points and weak points is always helpful.

I think the abstract damage aspect of conflicts--the ability to wear down a character whom you can't harm physically by other means, such as the suggested taunting and such--is one of the trickier concepts to introduce to people who are used to standard superhero RPGs. In some ways I find it similar to the "Inappropriate Cliche" rules for RISUS (http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm), except that there's no real clear guidelines on what Qualities might be appropriate.

This is something I wished had more examples in the book, specifically examples of how someone might use a completely non-combat Quality or Power to overcome a physical opponent. The best examples I've come across spring up now and then on the T&J Yahoo group (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/truthandjustice/) in discussions of actual play.

Does your group have any good actual play examples of asymmetrical conflicts like this (ie, the clever guy using Shatneresque Courtroom Lawyer to overcome Mighty Man's Invulnerability)?

Thanks for the review.

Doug

[chadu]

Samaritan, thanks for the review!

Is it okay if I send it along to the ASMP webmaestro to put up on the T&J reviews list, under your real name?

CU

[Samaritan]

Originally Posted by yorrick

Does your group have any good actual play examples of asymmetrical conflicts like this (ie, the clever guy using Shatneresque Courtroom Lawyer to overcome Mighty Man's Invulnerability)?

Hey, thanks!

Actually, one of our PCs was a 'smart ass' type, and actually took a Quality to 'taunt' someone. To be honest, I can't recall if it caused actual failure ranks against the opponent, or if it simply forced the opponent into a course of action of some kind (i.e., "Attack me, not him!").

I'd have to consult with the GM on that one, to see how they handled it. The example in the PDF of Snow Owl versus the powerhouse Joe Brick provides a decent example though, most notably making him slip around the roof and suffer failure ranks (p.65).

[Samaritan]

Originally Posted by chadu

Samaritan, thanks for the review!

Is it okay if I send it along to the ASMP webmaestro to put up on the T&J reviews list, under your real name?

CU

You are welcome, and most certainly!

[yorrick]

Originally Posted by Samaritan

Hey, thanks!

I'd have to consult with the GM on that one, to see how they handled it. The example in the PDF of Snow Owl versus the powerhouse Joe Brick provides a decent example though, most notably making him slip around the roof and suffer failure ranks (p.65).

That is a decent example, but I'm specifically interested in how people are determining what the target resists such actions with, particularly if they don't have any equivalent quality or power. Does the Hulk resist Super-Charisma with his Super-Strength, for example.

I really like the concept, it's just the execution that I could use more examples of--the potential varieties of abstract damage are not the sort of thing that are easy to spell out with rules in a system like T&J, so the best advice I can think to look for comes from people who have gotten to play.