Is Icons Any Good?

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>>55194642
I'm not familiar with it, but MHR with any one of its many fan-made point-buy chargen methods, or literally picking a path down the random roller with GM permission, both work great for running a superhero game.

>>55194642
Icons is pretty good. It's made by the same dude who did M&M, so I'm not sure if it's up your alley.

M&M is a mess in some areas but is all-round the best supers system available; I'd say M&M ties with Wild Talents in the supers gaming realm.

Best of the bunch, I've just lost patience for the complexity of M&M and Wild Talents.

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>>55196791

I know that feeling, anon. There's a ton of other supers games out there, many of which claim to be light, but nobody seems to play anything but M&M, so I have no idea which one to go for.

Let's see, I've recently picked up pdfs of Codename: Spandex, FASERIP, Mystery men, Supers!, a new 3e of Villains and Vigilantes, Sentinels of Echo City, and that's just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I know I've seen several more that I didn't get.

There's bound to be a good one out there somewhere that isn't a total crunchfest.

>>55194642
Seconding MHR.
And so long as you know what the character is that you're building before you start then you don't actually need the extended character creation rules that >>55195127 talks about (though it can be fun seeing the sorts of senseless powers you can end up putting together in the random generator).

>>55196791
If you don't like the complexity of M&M your going to hate the shit out of Hero, which is M&M but super simulationist to a weird degree considering its chosen assumed setting.

Like older editions literally had in explanatory text the hero repeatedly beating up badguys who were knocked out because the game simulated recovering from fatigue in such a specific way that the only way to keep someone knocked out for more than a few seconds who had superpowers was to basically brutalize their unconscious body for a solid minute.

And the amount of defenses in the game you need to keep track of is gross. In addition to the 2 basic types of damage, energy and physical, you have a weird pseudo damage category of mental that has access to all the defense powers energy and physical do, which are Absorption, Damage Resistance, Damage negation, and damage reduction, meaning there are 12 different types of "basic" defenses with 4 of them working very differently by forcing you to do calculator tier math every attack against you and the other 8 can become hardened to reduce vs killing attacks which means that there are really 20 basic defenses that can be on one sheet, and then you have a defense specifically dedicated to avoiding attacks on your senses (Flash defense), and a generic "power" defense for random bullshit, both of which are insanely potent if you lack them, meaning a character could hypothetically have 22 different defenses, and realistically could exit gen with 15. And then you have defensive combat value and mental defensive combat value, deflection, reflection, intangibility... So some attacks can literally require you to rebuild an incoming power on the fly with a lower points total to figure out the effect based on a percentage multiplier, then subtract points directly from the effect, and then force you to rebuild a power YOU have to gain points from the remaining damage.

M&M has "Ok your transform effect beat their fortitude save, next!"

>>55198486
>Crunchfest
Kek.

FASERIP is arguably the best of the bunch.

>>55198486
>>55196791

M&M isn't that crunchy or complex. 90% of all powers and mechanics are essentially "Roll a d20, add your modifiers, and try to get above your target's relevant defense. Stronger effect every 5 over you are."

There are some specific powers that require more effort than that, like the ones that change your stats on the fly like growth, but its actually a really simple game where most of the powers are basically saying "This just happens" when you use them.

The reason M&M sees so much play is because it is in depth enough to basically guarentee any hero you want to play can be played, without being so complex that you need to stop the action to look up rules, because in general every power just "works" the way it does, and it working vs it not working is down to a simple d20 rule rather than doing calculator math like Hero/Champions requires you to do.

Most other superhero games are very close ended in how you make characters, which sucks because the fun of a superhero game is basically coming up with a cool superhero.

While there are obviously other good superhero games out there, there is a reason M&M got so popular.

>>55196791
>complexity of M&M
M&M's the least complex in the genre, man.

>>55199669
It isn't but it is definitely the least complex one with open ended chargen.

Basically if you don't want to be linked heavily to a setting, or worse, forced to randomly gen a hero, you are going to be playing M&M, or your going to be playing Champions.

M&M has a very simple ruleset that basically is "Roll to hit, roll for effect, effect rolls get better every 5 they go over, everything is basically a condition tag that exists in its own bubble, and everything just sorta works." It also takes inspiration from rules light games, which is a good idea for the genre, with hero points and extra effort allowing you to do things like retroactively declare you have the materials to make a mind shielding device Batman style, to pull out some Shark Repellent Batspray, or to just flat up make up a new use for your powers so that if you forget something on your sheet you want you can still use it and just buy it later.

Champions is... dense. its not bad, I enjoy it, but it is dense as all hell and unlike most other RPGs I would say its definitely not a game anyone could hypothetically learn to the point they would enjoy it. It is fun, its a lot more specific than M&M, with cool rules like pushing, but fight resolution can be weird and non-thematic to the genre For example flash powers (basically flashbangs and the like) and entangles can be crazy overwhelmingly strong if people don't have powers specifically to defeat them. A basic flash can easily blind someone for a full minute when turns are taken as a second for example. It attempts to simulate superheroes, and that is sort of an exercise of such hubris that its chargen mechanics are 466 pages long and its combat mechanics are 322 in two seperate "Volumes" of one core book like its a fucking old school encyclopedia. And congrats, you MUST cross reference through these 800 pages to make and play a PC.

I want to run a My Hero Academia style game, what system allows for broad use of single powers?

>>55200167
M&M's power stunt system.

Though really, you don't have many characters in My Hero Academia who just have one power in mechanical terms.