Spectaculars, lightweight superhero fun

Spectaculars is a superhero RPG with a simple roll-under percentile die system. There are no cumbersome lists of modifiers, and the math required at the table should be accessible to precocious eight or nine year-olds. The game is clearly a love-letter to superhero comics, right down to players’ ability to invent backstory and create connections at the drop of a hat by spending “Continuity Tokens” to make up past issues with a relevant story detail. The game could also easily mimic the feel of superhero cartoons like Batman: The Animated Series, or any other episodic story where inventing background is expected or would be useful. Whatever your inspirations are, Spectaculars shines brightest when you’re playing episodic adventures in the context of a larger narrative arc. This is especially true if you’re more excited about your game’s larger story than you are about the gritty details of how a specific power works, or quantifying whose ”Mega Power Blast” is bigger.

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Immersion & Worldbuilding in Co-op Video Games

Void Crew, Deep Rock Galactic, and Helldivers 2: three co-op games, three “shooters” (kind of, more on that later), and three games that build on their own self-contained fiction. I’ve played all three. I’ve enjoyed all three. So why do I only admire two of them?

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Game system flavor & optional rules

This is pulled from a conversation I had recently about optional rules.

Rules combine to make systems, and systems create flavor by shaping the permissible and supported space of a game. Any skillful or willful group of players (the storyteller is a player too) can play outside the rules of the game system they’re using—that’s normal!—but that play isn’t supported by the system, and it isn’t part of the flavor the system creates.

Optional rules are opportunities…

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