I recently finished a 5 session game in Worlds in Peril and was pretty happy overall with the results. For a bit of background I have been gaming since the 80’s and for the last handful of years, I have been leaning toward narrative style RPGs. I love supers RPGs and have run Villians and Vigilantes, Faserip Marvel, Mutants and Masterminds, Champions, Marvel Super Heroic Roleplaying, and have played in Masks: A New Generation and Worlds in Peril before running this arc. I had 3 players that are very experienced in traditional style RPGs and 1 very new to tabletop RPGs.
Our game was set in our version of the Marvel Universe (I have dubbed it the U812 Universe for my own amusement). The arc was about Hank Pym wanting to create a respected team of heroes in the wake of the events of our version of the Civil War/ Superhuman Registration Act.
For our universe, this game was the first appearance of Hyperion. His plan was to establish himself as a hero and then create a false flag Skrull invasion and then create on opportunity to become earth’s Big Daddy.
Character Generation
The PCs were the Hulk, Ant-Man, and two original characters. Character gen is great in that it is pretty easy to create a concept and I often hate the creative limitations that trad supers games have to “balance” power. I like the free form nature of WiP. However, I found myself wishing that the character sheet was a bit more helpful for players while creating their characters. I think we found some of the terminology a bit confusing because it differed slightly from the sheets to the rulebook. Also, limitations seemed a bit unclear to me. I understand and like the relationship between bonds, and the dehumanization of power level, but it seems these are categorized with power-limitations and weaknesses. To my best understanding, the only reason to take a weakness or limitation of a power in narrative but there isn’t really a carrot for it like there is for the social limitations. This seemed a bit murky to me. Part of me wants to divide essential items in half and include one-half with an origin book preprinted on one sheet and the other half on a sheet with a drive book. Though drives are a bit less permanent, Hmm
Bottom Line
I love that WiP isn’t concerned with power level and that powers are abstracted in a cool way. I’d like to attempt to redesign the character sheet to get players up and running more quickly, but though generation is slow compared to many PbtA games, it is still much faster than supers game I have played in the past. A small price to pay to be able to create the hero you want. Power based playbooks seem like a bad choice.
Moves
I think that the push move and the power profile mechanical relationship was very fun and created some tense moment in the action. Some of the tension disappears when the PCs realize that they should probably burn a bond whenever they Push, but that’s resource management, right?
Some players commented that they ended up using take down a lot. Personally, I don’t see that as a negative. I think it speaks to a well-designed move and use of conditions. You can do a lot with that one move.
I might contradict myself with my thoughts on the Fit In move. I like the move itself, but I found myself wanting more options to repair bonds and inspire more superhero drama. I found that we seemed to go into down time, talk about who burnt bonds and then mashing the rp for the burnt bonds and the Fit In move together and it felt a bit clunky to me. That could just be that I didn’t run it well. I fit in is fine, but I would like to see some moves that are more specific to disagreements, trust, etc. Having a beer with someone is good, but having a “come to Jesus” meeting with them is something a bit different I think.
Bottom line
I think the moves handle superheroic action very well and the fit in move helped us create some scenes that frankly I always tried to make happen in supers RPGs but rarely could get off the ground. However, I found myself wanting more social moves.
Bonds
I like the bonds resource. I think that choosing a relationship to damage in exchange for a heroic success is a good motivator to create to personal life scenes with heroes. One player was hoping for a more complex relationship mechanic similar to Masks, but honestly, I think it worked great. The PCs created scenes that wouldn’t have been there without the burnt bonds, IMHO.
Conditions
I love the flexibility of the conditions system. It being so open ended that it seemed you could mechanically represent anything. I have some sticking points when dealing them out to players. I get that the severity has to flow from the fiction and I see that as a plus of the system, but, perhaps because of my players trad game background (or my own) I felt myself feeling like a need additional justification to deal a critical condition. “Oh! It’s a critical condition just because you say it is?!” This is likely just my eye still twitching from years of running dnd. I also find that I needed to knock the villain’s condition threshold almost in half in order for fights to actually end. Was I doing something wrong? Whew, they can take a beating!
I need to get better at coming up with interesting conditions at each level as well. Practice.Practice.Practice.
Summary
When I think of what I want in a supers game I have a pretty concrete list. I want it to:
Allow different power levels to play together in a fun way.
Support freeform character creation
Focus on narrative vs crunch
Force players and gms to narrate their actions FIRST!
Facilitate the soap opera drama of team comics
I think Worlds in Peril does these things pretty well. Though I wanted a bit more social moves, I think this system did more to inspire downtime scenes with the bonds mechanic than other games I have played. And I also realize that the ruleset is about superheroes saving the world. More Avengers than Jessica Jones. I’ll definitely be running it again. I might finally try my hand at some custom moves.
Hey Lonnie Spangler I’m glad you had a good time!
I think I will end up getting the character sheets redesigned at some point for sure, it could be a lot more helpful at facilitating character generation. Limitations used to be a more involved thing, but now they’re just implied and left to the player to come up with depending on how well they fit in, so there are some vestiges on the sheet of things that were altered slightly.
The Fit In move, like all moves really, are player facing so I always leave it up to the player to come up with their scenes for resolving Bonds and Fitting In – I just jump in at the end to throw in danger if the roll calls for it.
Bonds should also change to flow and match up with the fiction. I know that the game kind of leaves a lot of to GM fiat though – like with what you were saying with feeling a bit iffy on calling Conditions out. Ultimately that is more in line with my play style and I think it’s important that everything flows from the fiction, but I know one of the guys that did a lot of WiP playtesting liked to start with Minor Conditions and then work their way up so that it felt more earned. I think if you’re matching it up with events in the fiction the players will be ok with it, at least in my experience.
You aren’t the first to say that villains had Condition Thresholds too high either, people seem to be cutting them in half like you pretty often. Definitely go with what works for you and make it work with the fiction you guys want at the table. Pacing is super important. It may just be that in all our playtests our players were just way more effective, or we were more generous in doling out Conditions on villains. In any case, tweaking to get what you want is the way to go like you did.
Hey Lonnie Spangler I’m glad you had a good time!
I think I will end up getting the character sheets redesigned at some point for sure, it could be a lot more helpful at facilitating character generation. Limitations used to be a more involved thing, but now they’re just implied and left to the player to come up with depending on how well they fit in, so there are some vestiges on the sheet of things that were altered slightly.
The Fit In move, like all moves really, are player facing so I always leave it up to the player to come up with their scenes for resolving Bonds and Fitting In – I just jump in at the end to throw in danger if the roll calls for it.
Bonds should also change to flow and match up with the fiction. I know that the game kind of leaves a lot of to GM fiat though – like with what you were saying with feeling a bit iffy on calling Conditions out. Ultimately that is more in line with my play style and I think it’s important that everything flows from the fiction, but I know one of the guys that did a lot of WiP playtesting liked to start with Minor Conditions and then work their way up so that it felt more earned. I think if you’re matching it up with events in the fiction the players will be ok with it, at least in my experience.
You aren’t the first to say that villains had Condition Thresholds too high either, people seem to be cutting them in half like you pretty often. Definitely go with what works for you and make it work with the fiction you guys want at the table. Pacing is super important. It may just be that in all our playtests our players were just way more effective, or we were more generous in doling out Conditions on villains. In any case, tweaking to get what you want is the way to go like you did.
Also, for powers the idea is that the supers are still learning what they are capable of (correct me if I’m wrong Kyle) so when I see people emulate heroes with already solid powers and stuff the powers profile doesn’t meld well with it, since the protagonists are discovering what they can do still. It’s not super solidified like some of the Marvel superheroes we know, as we’re aware of their limits and various powers, and if they’re numerous it can be hard to graft that directly to a profile. You’d have to modify it to suit your needs if you wanted a fully fleshed out version of a super hero with a lot of powers, I think.
Also, for powers the idea is that the supers are still learning what they are capable of (correct me if I’m wrong Kyle) so when I see people emulate heroes with already solid powers and stuff the powers profile doesn’t meld well with it, since the protagonists are discovering what they can do still. It’s not super solidified like some of the Marvel superheroes we know, as we’re aware of their limits and various powers, and if they’re numerous it can be hard to graft that directly to a profile. You’d have to modify it to suit your needs if you wanted a fully fleshed out version of a super hero with a lot of powers, I think.
Fraser Simons Yeah we had sense of that but it still worked pretty well. The marvel PC’s were able to word their power profile in such a way that they could do most of what you’d expect and Ant Man used the push move two or three times. I mentioned that WiP was geared toward new heroes during creation and I don’t think the players really had a problem with it. I suppose I could have just allowed more slots in the power profile.
Fraser Simons Yeah we had sense of that but it still worked pretty well. The marvel PC’s were able to word their power profile in such a way that they could do most of what you’d expect and Ant Man used the push move two or three times. I mentioned that WiP was geared toward new heroes during creation and I don’t think the players really had a problem with it. I suppose I could have just allowed more slots in the power profile.
Cool! Sometimes people miss that and get disappointed that they can’t do everything right away. Cool to see people playing the game and enjoying it 🙂
Cool! Sometimes people miss that and get disappointed that they can’t do everything right away. Cool to see people playing the game and enjoying it 🙂
Fraser Simons Yeah! I think this will. Be my go to supers system for awhile. I was pretty addicted to the cortex plus marvel game. But I like what WiP did at the table.
Fraser Simons Yeah! I think this will. Be my go to supers system for awhile. I was pretty addicted to the cortex plus marvel game. But I like what WiP did at the table.