So we started playing the Justice Squad campaign this weekend. Lots of fun. Here’s my personal good/bad/ugly list.
Good
– I’ve never been in a game GM’d by Dave, whom I’ve heard only good things of. No surprise, his style is different than mine, but great fun for everyone, and I always enjoy watching other people work and taking mental notes.
– Supers. It’s just fun. Maybe it’s not Star Wars, but I’m not PLAYING Star Wars, am I? One of the really long-running and fun games I played in in college was a Champions supers game, and I just love the feel of calculating knockback on a hex map. Whee.
– Rules. I’m pissy about BESM most of the time, but I worked my ass off on figuring out a workable version until SAS (supers from goo) comes out, and it seems to be working.
Bad
– I can’t min/max a character they way I could in Champions (nor to I want to anymore), but I know the rules better than probably anyone else playing (for now). While the characters themselves are all very cool concepts and built on the same points, there was a certain feeling disparity between them, simply because of design efficiency. This isn’t to say we don’t all have a few points ‘wasted’ on things like Painting or Horseback riding, but after the play-test and redesign, I felt like the character’s I designed were a little overwhelming.
(Offside of this: I’m also helping Dave by statting out some bad guy NPC’s — so I guess I’ll reap what I’ve sown in the long run.)
All in all, really fun though, and I’m looking forward to the next installment a great deal.
“but after the play-test and redesign, I felt like the character’s I designed were a little overwhelming.”
I got something of that feel too. It’s my main hesitation in playing 2C rather than some powerhouse. If most of the bad guys are designed against the powerhouses, she’s toast. If they’re not, fights are short. Bring on the gangs of minion goons, I guess.
That’s part of it, too. but in honesty, I think everyone just needs to acknowledge a certain design limitation… max protect of 75 and max damage of 100? Something like that.
Can’t help it if people still only put 20 points into armor and FF combined.
Me, I think I want design limits AND a loose idea of what I’m up against. For instance, low level (minion) attacks to average around 20+ACV damage and 1 level Armor Pen or 40+; mid-range attacks at X and heavy attacks at Y. Ditto for DCVs of foes, number of Extra Attacks one can expect and some notion of the strength of and odds of a mental attack. And average flying speed.
Designing characters with just a point level to go by is chancy.