One of my players thoughts on my first WiP one shot.
I got to play Worlds in Peril, the superhero game using the Apocalypse World engine, with +Lonnie Spangler last night. We’d played a couple supers campaigns using Marvel Heroic Roleplaying before, and had been looking to test drive this system. In a nice touch, the game was set in the same continuity as our Heroic campaigns (three of the players were vets of those games, and two of us were even playing the same characters from the last go-round), so it really felt like a continuation.
Overall, I was pleased with how it turned out. Getting the character (I was playing Hank Pym as Ant Man) statted up was easy and painless, and the way the system handles powers is freeform enough that it easily facilitated the way that superheroes do new and inventive things with their powers that you so often see in comics but which is hard to pull off in some RPGs where game mechanical effects are more rigidly defined. That had been one of the things that I’d always liked about MHR over something like Mutants & Masterminds.
One thing I appreciated was speed. MHR’s dice pool mechanics are cool, insofar as the dice you choose to include in an action are a kind of storytelling. By choosing which distinctions to invoke (and whether they work for or against you), your establishing what narrative elements are important to the scene. The downside is that you build a LOT of those pools, and sometimes that process can be slow, especially in a larger game. Worlds in peril seemed to have a similar level of freedom and player agency, but the resolution of actions would likely happen more quickly.
The other thing I liked is bonds. By tracking the bonds that a character has with various NPCs, and being able to burn a bond in order to snag a bonus, it invokes a lot of the interpersonal drama that you see in comic books really well. After all, comics have always been basically daytime soap operas with more punching, a fact that the CW network appears to have noticed and been quite successful cashing in on.
The one thing I didn’t like as much was a slight death spiral effect that we ran into last night. Now, it seems that part of this was that we bungled a rule, and made things mechanically harder on ourselves than they were supposed to be. Another part was some of the most statistically improbable set of unlucky rolls I have ever seen at a table. In a system were we would have expected to have at least partial success on an action more often than not, we kept botching. And once we’d taken some complications, the penalties on later rolls made it harder to dig ourselves out of the hole.
MHR was sort of self-balancing in this respect. Someone who gets hit with a lot of crummy rolls tends to earn a lot of plot points, which tends to facilitate the big “hero comeback” that you see in comics ALL the time. Getting that last night seemed harder, but I’m not sure if that impression will be true if we play again.
I’m definitely looking forward to giving that system another test run.
Other than messing up the critical conditions penalties. I think I may of prolonged combat too much by shying away from giving critical conditions in response to the under 6 rolls. On one hand I was trying to not spank you guys, but I wonder if it would have been more fun to have a much shorter combat in which Ultron beats you, you guys lick your wounds, have some social, and investigation scenes that move the story along and then fight again another day where hopefully the dice are more kind.
Hmm, the link doesn’t appear to work. At least, not for me.
It’s always a tricky balance to strike, at the end of the day you want to keep it fun, so if a fight feels like its dragging then it’s time to end it or change up the dynamic. Often for bigger, badder Ultron type characters I usually have them recur – either they get beat up in the first fight a bunch and then retreat after coming up with solutions to counter the PCs’ powers, or the PCs get spanked and then the big bad leaves after accomplishing their objective and the PCs need to devise ways to be more effective against them the next time. It’s always a ton of fun.
Sorry guys. I edited the post to include his write up above.
Nice! Yeah, there is a limit on the death spiral, and the EIC is always in control of fights and when and how rough the Conditions dished out are, but it can take some playing to strike that balance and find the tone you want. Worlds in Peril also simulates that hero comeback differently – namely by having the players Burn Bonds. That way the victory is not only hard one, but we also get some great drama for when they Fit In during downtime.
I had the same feeling with the -1 into -2 into -3 into fail everything and feel idiot instead of superheroic.
We house ruled that conditions do not give you minuses. They are just narrative limitations. More limiting and more enduring the more severe they are.
They still burn bonds consistently. Everybody wants to ensure that good result in special occasions.
It worked for us. We love everything else about the game, so with this little touch we find it perfect.
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