The Game: Staged Heroism
The Publisher: Nerdburger Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one
The Publisher: Nerdburger Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one
I said recently that Nerdburger Games pretty consistently makes games I want to play, but of course there's always gotta be an exception (in fairness, this is a game that Nerdburger published but wasn't created by Craig Campbell). And like, there's nothing wrong with this game, it's just one of those games that's based on something I don't know (Venture Bros., specifically) and I don't get the jokes.
I think that the jokes mostly revolve around superheroes and comic takes therewith, and I have other games like that - Silver Haired Sentinels, Stuperpowers!, and the like. I like the idea, I just didn't vibe with this game particularly. But let's make a character and see how we do.
First up we Choose a class. Classes here are Hero, Villain, Sidekick, and Secret Agent. I'm not quite sure what the niches are we're going for here.
OK, reading through them again, I think what's happening here is that Heroes and Villains are pretty much what is says on the tin, but the important thing is that they have "origin characters" that they can flash back to. The origin character of John Stewart, for example, might be Hal Jordan (except that Stewart is much more capable than the PCs of this game). Secret Agents don't have origin characters, they have agencies, and sidekicks don't have them either, they have a hero or villain they're attached to. Frankly I think taking a more Masks approach and making each of the four classes have its own mechanical or narrative wrinkle (that is, making the origin character concept part of the deal for heroes and villains, but change the focus slightly) might be have been smarter, because as it is the book says "everyone gets an origin character" when in fact only half the classes do.
REGARDLESS. I don't have a strong preference, so let's just roll a d4. Going alphabetical (1=Hero, 2=Secret Agent, etc.), we get...1, Hero! Fine.
Next up we distribute our Ability score. I get 5 points to divvy up, I can't spend more than 2, but as a Hero I get to add 1 to two of them after the fact. So I guess I should come up with some kind of concept. Ugh, I got nothing today. Perchance The Weird can help? Sure, there's a table for Weird Superpowers. Rolling a 29 gets me..."create cigarettes" (ew, no), "cause disembodied spirits to possess and animate inanimate objects" (that's better), "push things a few minutes into the future" (sounds fun, but would be harder to adjudicate in play), and "control moths and butterflies" (HELL YEAH).
OK, so we'll say my character is Aston Attwater, aka Red Admiral! His origin character was his father, Andrew Attwater, aka Monarch! Monarch could control any insect (or invertebrate, depending on who's writing this episode) and could fly, and had the proportional strength of a butterfly (some super-strength). His son Aston can control...butterflies and moths. That's it. He's working on beetles.
Look, controlling butterflies isn't so bad. They're great distractions, they can gum up machinery (but that involves a lot of them dying, so Aston's not so into that), they're...very pretty. It's bad enough everyone thinks that Aston's super-name has something to do with boats. He hates boats.
Right, so, Abilities. I picture Aston as a willowy, slight sort of lad, but very colorful and striking, so let's put Charm at 2 and...everything else at 1, I guess, because based on the pregens we have to have 1 point in everything (so why not give us a point in all four Abilities and then two more points to spend?). I'll put my free points from Hero into Charm and Physicality.
Now we choose Qualities. I get two; these are basically just extra little perks except they have really long, cute names. I'll take Just Let Me Try This Again, I'm Ready For It This Time!, which lets me reroll a failed check twice per scene, and This is Gonna Be One of Those Things, Isn't It?, which lets me name a thing and get a +1 to use it. In this case, the thing is going to be using a swarm of butterflies to distract and befuddle someone.
"Note my powers per scene." Um. I can use my power three times per scene (equal to the controlling Ability, which I think should be Charm), but unlimited to do little cosmetic stuff.
Durability is 12 (10 + Physicality). No place to put that on the sheet, can't be that important.
History, which I've done! Red Admiral has an outfit designed in the style of his butterfly namesake, mostly black with red trim and wing-like flaps under the arms that do exactly nothing. I think he's good at making an entrance (bursting through a cloud of butterflies!) and from there...not as impressive.
That'll do it!
