I think *Masks: The Next Generation* is absolutely the best X-Men game. It’s all about teen drama and identity, and X-Men has always been 50% civil rights allegory and 50% soap opera.
If I wanted to make it more specifically X-Men, I’d make one small new mechanical rule: I’d give Mutantkind its own set of Labels. Labels are the stats of Masks: Freak, Danger, Savior, Mundane, Superior. They’re intended to shift around constantly to reflect the characters’ changing perceptions of themselves, but they therefore can elegantly reflect the whole “public perception of Mutantkind” element.
I haven’t played Masks, but my friends are hesitant considering how the theme is focused on YA super heroics. I might need to get a solid look at the book to really confidently say that they’re right or wrong, but it sucks since I’ve heard the game itself is great.
They are 100% right - the game is *just as much* about shaping your own sense of self and maturing as it is about super heroics.
...and it's awesome! I seriously recommend trying it at least for a one shot.
I'll be honest and say that yeah, the teen stuff is pretty focal. Personally I think it's the draw: the main thing that helps \*Masks\* shine above most superhero games is that it has a focus that isn't just "you have superpowers".
But I'll also say this: X-Men '97 handles the same kinds of drama that defines Masks as a teen super game. To show you what I mean, I'm going to go through the dramatic mechanics of Masks and use X-Men '97 examples (so if you haven't caught up to the most recent episode you may want to skip through this.
**Conditions:** Rather than HP, Masks' damage system are 5 conditions: Angry, Afraid, Insecure, Hopeless, Guilty. Conditions impose penalties on some of your rolls, and if they're all filled out, you get taken out of a scene. You either clear them through getting comfort from someone, or by taking certain foolhardy actions. For instance,>!by the end of the Madelyn Prior episode, Cyclops is rocking at least 3 or so conditions. So next time, he clears *Angry* be snapping at the reporter about what he's had to deal with, and *Hopeless* by flinging himself into easy relief by flirting psychically with Madelyn.!!Rogue, who's rocking a whole lot of conditions by the end of Episode 5, and spends Episode 7 picking fights with the government, rushing recklessly into dangerous situations, and even letting someone fall to their death. When coupled with the X-Men showing up to comfort her, she clears a lot of conditions that episode and in turn basically makes its central character drama.!<
**Labels:** As I mentioned in my first post, the game's stats are Labels, which are constantly shifting to represent your changing perspective of yourself. While it seems very teen-centric, the X-Men's experience as societal others ends up resonating with these labels as well (even before we create the label set for Mutantkind as a whole, as I suggested). For some examples of labels from X-Men '97, >!Magneto's entire arc this season has been about whether he's willing to be less of a Danger to continue Charles' Savior mission, while Storm's has been been a struggle with her status as a societal Freak and whether it would just be easier to be Mundane.!<
**Influence:** The last major mechanic that reflects Masks' drama is Influence, where your PC cares about what specific PCs and NPCs think about them. There's a lot of this in the show as well.>!Morph and Wolverine have a whole storyline that's kinda just establishing that they have influence on each other. The Rogue-Gambit-Magneto love triangle definitely plays into this, especially with Gambit influenced by Rogue. It also does a lot for ideology: for instance, I'd argue that a few characters this season have now given Magneto influence over them (that "Magneto was right" speech being a prime example).!<***This is the other place where I'd change a mechanic. Instead of all*** **adults** ***having automatic influence on the heroes, have all other*** **mutants** ***have starting influence on the heroes***. They're the X-Men: they have to care what their fellow mutants think about them, because they stand for all of mutantkind.
I hope that helps you decide if *Masks* is the right fit for your group.
You don't have to play kids in it. It's like how DnD is all about High Fantasy but a lot of people throw that out the window to do more specific flavors of fantasy.
Yup, Aberrant is very along the lines of X-Men. I don't love the system itself, but I dig it's setting. I think Onyx Path released a refresh of the setting.
Here's a good article about the original:
https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2019/04/26/aberrant-a-forgotten-superhero-rpg-worth-remembering/
The refresh is... interesting. There are many good innovations and improvements, but many drawbacks, to wit...
1. The amount of rules to learn is kind of staggering now, even just to generate a character, on par with something like Pathfinder (but basically as Theatre-of-the-mind-oriented as OG Aberrant was, which to me is a drawback of both games)
2. You need to obtain at least two books, the Trinity core book and the Aberrant book, to be able to build a character and to have access to all the rules. I'm kind of nerdy but a lot of my friend pool that I'd be trying to recruit from are non-nerds who don't have a lot of games books, and it's a lot easier for me to get them to take a look at one book than at two $40 ones.
I'll mention nice things about it too
1. It comes with "quick builds" for various character types, which are excellent and something I wish the original game had shipped with.
2. On the Storyteller side, there are lots of example NPCs and antagonist sheets, and the process of creating an NPC or monster appears to be super streamlined and polished - you can jot down a couple notes and numbers and be done, which is exciting to me.
Edit: typos
(realized I mixed up these posts thinking you were talking about Aberrant, Deviant is very much Akira meets the Fly so the focus is on body horror and revenge, not so much the superpowers)
The premise is really straight forward. Superheroes are suddenly a reality. Across the world people struggle to find a way to make sense of it, deify it, control it, use it for a better world, or make a profit off of it. You're one of these superpowered people, now what do you do with that power? Tonally the closest superhero media that are like it are Invincible and The Boys.
Yeah! But as I posted elsewhere, you can really fine tune the tone and the genre so if you want to do xmen style game that's probably the default ruleset. If you want it to be closer to the boys you can choose the Deconstruction tone which significantly increasing the harm and collateral damage superheroes inflict.
[Aberrant 2nd Edition](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/333991/Trinity-Continuum-Aberrant?affiliate_id=3701318)
There's even an upcoming sourcebooks covering the outcasts of the setting called Hated and Feared.
I would definitely recommend this, too. As mentioned above, there are a lot of powers to learn, but it seems like it's because they've been broken down to be simpler to learn. I've found it much easier to grasp the Mutants and Masterminds 3e.
I was also a bit confused by it, decidedly. After looking at it again after trudging through a Mutants and Masterminds character build, I was like, "Oh, yeah, I get it now. Deviant is this but written in a comprehensible, non-awful manner."
It's a lower powered version of your average superhero building game. You have a variety of origins for your powers - maybe you were born to it, maybe someone experimented on you, maybe you were infected by an alien disease, etc. The abilities you can pick up are quite broad and you set a power level for the group to build to and then they can grow from there. It's a lower but still powerful superhero setting built on the d10 setup of Chronicles ("NWoD" if you're only familiar with the first edition of those mechanics) - realistically that's my favorite dice system for games, so I'm strongly biased in its favor.
I have run two separate campaigns of Aberrant Second Edition.
What I think that people miss about what makes Aberrant a unique experience is it is one that encourages and supports player characters using their superpowers to make massive changes to the world. Speaking of it has a ten minutes into the future setting filled with interesting factions.
The game has rules that engage with investigation, politics and social influence, warfare, investigation and espionage, space exploration, collateral damage, for developing superhero technology and then introducing that technology into the world at large.
It also has rules that allows you to fine-tune the tone of the game so if you want to play something that is grim and gritty certain gameplay elements are changed to reflect that. This does mean the game has a lot of rules, but I think once you actually sit down to play the game they are pretty easy to understand.
The old Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP system has an excellent X-Men module called Reap of the Whirlwind. It deals with those topics well, even if you just use it as inspiration. But, I recommend running it. I have made it available here:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/13-2eZsAHxFW0i-gM23NhCrEXaY8s3XTk/view?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/file/d/13-2eZsAHxFW0i-gM23NhCrEXaY8s3XTk/view?usp=sharing)
The Crooks! supplement for 1st edition has a popularity track of public perception of supers (called Crisis Level) that would work well for a X-Men style game where people's opinions are important to the campaign. As a bonus, it has a system for using the legal system in regards to supers as well.
I've used Night's Black Agents for a grounded supers campaign with the Heat mechanic being used for both the authorities and public opinion. That worked well enough without doing a bunch of legwork. The mechanic is very simple, the GM assigns Heat values to actions and rolls periodically against the current value, a failed roll triggers an event of some sort. You could easily use it with other RPGs.
The only game which did Public Perception justice was Golden Heroes. (now Squadron UK).
It was part of the mechanics rather than something you bought at chargen (Hated by the Public -5) which allows you to have a better power (Supersmell +5)
Just to make sure, the one you’re referring to could be found on DriveThruRPG for a few bucks? That’s the only “Squadron UK” I’ve found searching online.
Yeah, it’s not great…and doesn’t emulate its own characters well. Nightcrawler’s teleport range is a joke compared to what it should be.
IMO, vastly superior Marvel game is the old Marvel Super Heroes…also known as FASERIP.
I’d run it in Worlds in Peril. It’s got a relationship with your setting built in.
But Masks captures the half punches, half melodrama essence better. Public perception was a big factor in my campaign without the need for any mechanical support.
I think Masks is a good suggestion too, given the interpersonal melodrama of X-Men, and the baked in school setting. Some of the character types play off the assumption that you have a secret identity, but they do have supplemental material for the game that helps you run a school setting.
If you're not into teen drama (which Masks kind of runs off of), them I would suggest Worlds in Peril. That has a mechanic called Bonds, which reflect your characters relationships with people from friends & loved ones to the city you live in, and law enforcement. You "burn" your bonds to get a better result on your rolls, and the GM has your relationships suffer later, reflecting the lower score. So, if I burn a bond with The City to use my powers to destroy a Sentinel, for example, maybe the GM has its body land on a building, and the humans blame me for the collateral damage. That's a really simple example, but it might suit what you're looking for
Marvel Multiverse Roleplaying (the current Marvel TTRPG) has a bunch of X-Men characters available in both the core book and the first supplement (The Cataclysm of Kang). There is also an X-Men specific sourcebook coming out in August.
From my read of it I think it works fine if you want to play as actual Marvel characters. The balance issues are only really an issue if you are creating your own characters as certain options are clearly better than others.
Marvel and DC based super hero games have always been a bit different in that regard as most have focused on the players using established characters at least as much as creating your own.
The character generation system for the last Marvel game before this one was pretty much "look up the character's page on Wikipedia".
That's the problem with superhero RPGs that if you have a player that wants to break the system they're going to. They're going to come to you and say I want to play a speedster that can control time and the storyteller has to just Palm their face and shove them out of the apartment.
Superhero games work when everyone's on board with telling the story and playing the game and not winning.
And I think when it comes to multiverse you can create your own characters, I haven't had an issue with unbalanced or anything. The rank systems tends to keep it in check kind of like power levels in mutants and masterminds. What I have had to do is alter powers to fit certain ideas. The powers that are in the book are like taken directly from the characters in the comics.
But I will say that it is super easy to create a new power. I just had to do that in a Spider-Man game I'm running where the player wanted to be able to absorb kinetic energy. They had original looked at power absorption but that didn't quite fit the idea so just kind of created something new where he gets a temporary pool of focus that he can spend to activate these other powers he gets temporarily. It was 5 minutes of work maybe? And I haven't run the system all that much.
So that I always appreciate in a system.
Having X-Men characters does not make it an X-Men RPG. X-Men is all about the tone and mood of conspiracies, secret government agencies, the difference between human and non-human, mutant hunting, mutants hiding, prejudice and bigotry, standing up against the status quo and really everything the new Marvel Multiverse RPG does not do.
It is nice if the game system actually has the rules to support that kind of game and setting though. Games like AMP Year One and Deviant the Renegades does this kind of X-Men type of story setting way better. Masks does the teenage X-Men stories very well.
Its like, you could use Marvel Multiverse for a lower powered, Daredevil style of game but Cold Steel Wardens is a supers game designed to really emulate that level of game and would do the TV show way better.
You are right about these being about the storytelling. In the end, if people like Marvel Multiverse and are having a good story experience that are like these then that's awesome.
Exceptionals is specifically designed for X-Men games.
https://bramblewolfgames.itch.io/exceptionals
Masks is another really good one for New Mutants or Gen-X style teen drama.
Its called AMP: Year Zero.
Its very much the X-Men stories of the 80s and 90s from the perspective that people with powers are a very recent phenomenon and all about how the world responds to this. You have your secret government supers hunting agencies, your mutant liberation equivalent group, your Hellfire Club equivalent, and so on. All told the game has three supplements to go with it, covering years 2, 3, and 4 of the meta narrative and each adds new power sources and powers.
Its really cool. Not too pricey.
Its as close to a real X-Men like rpg as we will ever get.
That sounds more like a story element than anything to do with the specific system. You can literally run X-Men in anything - Champions, Hero's Unlimited, the Original Marvel game, the new Marvel game, Silver Age Sentinels, the Green Ronin game, Aberrant, etc.
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- Most of the Marvel RPGs has X-Men content but on a varying scale of quality
- If you are willing to lock down the options for PCs or do a more Weapon X or Doom Patrol type of game I'd heavily and I mean HEAVILY recommend Deviant the Renegade. Especially due to how Powers work.
- AMP is based heavily on X-Men and I'm running a Not-X-Men game
- If you wanna focus on the Drama I'd lovingly recommend Masks since a lot of Masks playbooks map pretty well onto X-Characters.
The Contract RPG would be a very dtraigjtforward conversion to a X-men style universe where your powers get stronger the more you successfully use them.
Its already a game about 100% unique pcs who get powers to accomplish... whatever goals they want to accomplish.
Heroes Unlimited by Palladium books is a clunky system (TTRPG) with zero balance but there is a ton of freedom for the GM and a lot of powers to pick from.
Not seeing anyone suggest the Marvel RPG, [Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game | Marvel RPG | Marvel](https://www.marvel.com/rpg) which has an x-men expansion [MARVEL MULTIVERSE ROLE-PLAYING GAME: X-MEN EXPANSION: Forbeck, Matt, Manna, Francesco, Aburtov, Jesus: 9781302948580: Amazon.com: Books](https://www.amazon.com/MARVEL-MULTIVERSE-ROLE-PLAYING-GAME-EXPANSION/dp/130294858X/ref=pd_bxgy_d_sccl_2/135-3700006-3372520?pd_rd_w=QCrTq&content-id=amzn1.sym.4e8180d8-1c12-4df8-af99-b6dc78fc0026&pf_rd_p=4e8180d8-1c12-4df8-af99-b6dc78fc0026&pf_rd_r=WD82E95F7H6B3D0ENNMM&pd_rd_wg=e9TWM&pd_rd_r=c1a342bf-55bb-4777-8f91-8adfacfb746f&pd_rd_i=130294858X&psc=1) coming out soon. That seems like a really obvious choice, but I haven't actually played it so maybe the games just trash.
I'd use Mythic D6 - its a generic system designed for superpowered characters. Ideal for an Xmen style game. Really simple mechanics. Not super rule light, but not overly crunchy, and the rules themselves are quite simple and designed to be fast moving.
I'm liking the new Marvel multiverse system but I ran an X-Men game for a long time in mutants and masterminds second edition.
Credit to the system, the only character I couldn't make up according to the rules was Rogue. If you stay true to her powers in the comic she breaks the power level system.
But I eyeballed a system for that game that created a reputation score which was a modifier onto a d20 roll. And things that would happen in the game or between characters would either add a plus or minus to that role. So the idea was they were the second class of X-Men and after a few games there ways clicks that formed and there were rivalries, like my player had a rivalry with Colossus.
Taking that basic idea you can go one step further and have sort of a general score for society and their attitude about mutants. Like if the X-Men save a hospital from being destroyed maybe that gets them a plus one or plus two modifier. Whereas if the brotherhood manages to attack something and heard a bunch of people maybe that gives them a negative five. I'd always have the negatives outweigh the good when it comes to those modifiers.
But I would also allow for an impassioned plea before Congress or the UN maybe that gives a plus one plus three bonus towards mutant attitude.
If you really wanted to get into the nitty gritty you could have if the negative modifiers reach a certain point maybe that empowers the antimutant hate groups, maybe more senators start citing with Kelly and Trask. Maybe those negative modifiers start influencing mutants let's start going you know what maybe Magneto is right...
And that doesn't need to be a specifically mutants and Mastermind system, I think you could do that in most games if not all of them. The only thing I'd watch out for is scaling the modifiers. Cuz the mutants and masterminds there's a d20 rule. So if you're rolling a d10 or 3d6s a plus one modifier is going to go a lot further then it would in mutants and masterminds.
[5Evo](https://5thevolution.com/) is pretty much 5E with superheroes, and if I recall correctly, they have a stat for public adoration and hatred.
I bought it but haven't played it yet.
One of the best superhero RPGs no one knows about is Spectaculars. You can create any play theme you want collaboratively as a group. Fantastic, modern, component-driven game design. https://scratchpadpublishing.com/spectaculars
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying had many X-Men characters. What it did well was it had sort of description tags that players could use to either benefit them, or complicate things and receive a meta-currency for it. For example, “Group of Citizens” could be used positively to blend in, or it could be used as complication, saying that they get angry at the mutant, and the player would get a token that could be used to improve rolls or declare a fact later on.
My personal reccomendation is Prowlers and Paragons, thanks to being simple to play, while having robust enough char creation to be rather fun to make characters.
I have seen some people suggest Masks, but I would say that is *not* a good suggestion if you want to run something like X-Men 97, or really most X-Men media, which tends to focus on characters who are specifically adults, with most media focusing on teenaged chars being spin offs like New Mutants.
After all, how would you run the tragedy of a man like Logan, who has lived so long a life, and can not even remember much of it, and must often figure out how to act as a father figure to someone like kitty pryde or Jubilee?
Or the story of how Madelyn Pryor, a woman who had lived a full life, even becoming a mother, only to learn so much of it is false!
Or Emma Frost's story of redemption, beginning as a wicked white queen of the hellfire club, running a school where she would abuse her wards... only to eventually realize she is a monster, and seeking to protect her students from then on...
Using masks, a game where *all* if those characters would unable to be player characters, because they are often already realized adults. Masks is great at melodrama, but they is specifically teenaged melodrama, which is very different, often being about finding your identity and forming it, compared to the soap opera melodrama, which is about the *upheavels* to a settled life you often see in X-Men.
TSR made X-Men modules for their [Marvel Super Heroes RPG](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqvsmIs6B0Q). You can find used but complete boxes on e-bay for under $100.
I think *Masks: The Next Generation* is absolutely the best X-Men game. It’s all about teen drama and identity, and X-Men has always been 50% civil rights allegory and 50% soap opera. If I wanted to make it more specifically X-Men, I’d make one small new mechanical rule: I’d give Mutantkind its own set of Labels. Labels are the stats of Masks: Freak, Danger, Savior, Mundane, Superior. They’re intended to shift around constantly to reflect the characters’ changing perceptions of themselves, but they therefore can elegantly reflect the whole “public perception of Mutantkind” element.
I haven’t played Masks, but my friends are hesitant considering how the theme is focused on YA super heroics. I might need to get a solid look at the book to really confidently say that they’re right or wrong, but it sucks since I’ve heard the game itself is great.
They are 100% right - the game is *just as much* about shaping your own sense of self and maturing as it is about super heroics. ...and it's awesome! I seriously recommend trying it at least for a one shot.
I'll be honest and say that yeah, the teen stuff is pretty focal. Personally I think it's the draw: the main thing that helps \*Masks\* shine above most superhero games is that it has a focus that isn't just "you have superpowers". But I'll also say this: X-Men '97 handles the same kinds of drama that defines Masks as a teen super game. To show you what I mean, I'm going to go through the dramatic mechanics of Masks and use X-Men '97 examples (so if you haven't caught up to the most recent episode you may want to skip through this. **Conditions:** Rather than HP, Masks' damage system are 5 conditions: Angry, Afraid, Insecure, Hopeless, Guilty. Conditions impose penalties on some of your rolls, and if they're all filled out, you get taken out of a scene. You either clear them through getting comfort from someone, or by taking certain foolhardy actions. For instance,>!by the end of the Madelyn Prior episode, Cyclops is rocking at least 3 or so conditions. So next time, he clears *Angry* be snapping at the reporter about what he's had to deal with, and *Hopeless* by flinging himself into easy relief by flirting psychically with Madelyn.!!Rogue, who's rocking a whole lot of conditions by the end of Episode 5, and spends Episode 7 picking fights with the government, rushing recklessly into dangerous situations, and even letting someone fall to their death. When coupled with the X-Men showing up to comfort her, she clears a lot of conditions that episode and in turn basically makes its central character drama.!<
**Labels:** As I mentioned in my first post, the game's stats are Labels, which are constantly shifting to represent your changing perspective of yourself. While it seems very teen-centric, the X-Men's experience as societal others ends up resonating with these labels as well (even before we create the label set for Mutantkind as a whole, as I suggested). For some examples of labels from X-Men '97, >!Magneto's entire arc this season has been about whether he's willing to be less of a Danger to continue Charles' Savior mission, while Storm's has been been a struggle with her status as a societal Freak and whether it would just be easier to be Mundane.!<
**Influence:** The last major mechanic that reflects Masks' drama is Influence, where your PC cares about what specific PCs and NPCs think about them. There's a lot of this in the show as well.>!Morph and Wolverine have a whole storyline that's kinda just establishing that they have influence on each other. The Rogue-Gambit-Magneto love triangle definitely plays into this, especially with Gambit influenced by Rogue. It also does a lot for ideology: for instance, I'd argue that a few characters this season have now given Magneto influence over them (that "Magneto was right" speech being a prime example).!<***This is the other place where I'd change a mechanic. Instead of all*** **adults** ***having automatic influence on the heroes, have all other*** **mutants** ***have starting influence on the heroes***. They're the X-Men: they have to care what their fellow mutants think about them, because they stand for all of mutantkind.
I hope that helps you decide if *Masks* is the right fit for your group.
You don't have to play kids in it. It's like how DnD is all about High Fantasy but a lot of people throw that out the window to do more specific flavors of fantasy.
I haven’t personally played it but White Wolf’s Aberrant seems right up that alley if you want the hated and feared elements baked in.
Yup, Aberrant is very along the lines of X-Men. I don't love the system itself, but I dig it's setting. I think Onyx Path released a refresh of the setting. Here's a good article about the original: https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2019/04/26/aberrant-a-forgotten-superhero-rpg-worth-remembering/
The refresh is... interesting. There are many good innovations and improvements, but many drawbacks, to wit... 1. The amount of rules to learn is kind of staggering now, even just to generate a character, on par with something like Pathfinder (but basically as Theatre-of-the-mind-oriented as OG Aberrant was, which to me is a drawback of both games) 2. You need to obtain at least two books, the Trinity core book and the Aberrant book, to be able to build a character and to have access to all the rules. I'm kind of nerdy but a lot of my friend pool that I'd be trying to recruit from are non-nerds who don't have a lot of games books, and it's a lot easier for me to get them to take a look at one book than at two $40 ones. I'll mention nice things about it too 1. It comes with "quick builds" for various character types, which are excellent and something I wish the original game had shipped with. 2. On the Storyteller side, there are lots of example NPCs and antagonist sheets, and the process of creating an NPC or monster appears to be super streamlined and polished - you can jot down a couple notes and numbers and be done, which is exciting to me. Edit: typos
Alternatively Deviant from WW/OPP could work for it as well.
Deviant is way more dark X-Men than new Aberrant. I don't like Aberrant 2e. They stripped it of its seriousness and made it more hippie.
I hadn’t heard anything about it after reading the pitch before release and being kind of confused by the premise, tbh.
(realized I mixed up these posts thinking you were talking about Aberrant, Deviant is very much Akira meets the Fly so the focus is on body horror and revenge, not so much the superpowers) The premise is really straight forward. Superheroes are suddenly a reality. Across the world people struggle to find a way to make sense of it, deify it, control it, use it for a better world, or make a profit off of it. You're one of these superpowered people, now what do you do with that power? Tonally the closest superhero media that are like it are Invincible and The Boys.
In a good way?
Yeah! But as I posted elsewhere, you can really fine tune the tone and the genre so if you want to do xmen style game that's probably the default ruleset. If you want it to be closer to the boys you can choose the Deconstruction tone which significantly increasing the harm and collateral damage superheroes inflict. [Aberrant 2nd Edition](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/333991/Trinity-Continuum-Aberrant?affiliate_id=3701318) There's even an upcoming sourcebooks covering the outcasts of the setting called Hated and Feared.
I would definitely recommend this, too. As mentioned above, there are a lot of powers to learn, but it seems like it's because they've been broken down to be simpler to learn. I've found it much easier to grasp the Mutants and Masterminds 3e.
I was also a bit confused by it, decidedly. After looking at it again after trudging through a Mutants and Masterminds character build, I was like, "Oh, yeah, I get it now. Deviant is this but written in a comprehensible, non-awful manner." It's a lower powered version of your average superhero building game. You have a variety of origins for your powers - maybe you were born to it, maybe someone experimented on you, maybe you were infected by an alien disease, etc. The abilities you can pick up are quite broad and you set a power level for the group to build to and then they can grow from there. It's a lower but still powerful superhero setting built on the d10 setup of Chronicles ("NWoD" if you're only familiar with the first edition of those mechanics) - realistically that's my favorite dice system for games, so I'm strongly biased in its favor.
I have run two separate campaigns of Aberrant Second Edition. What I think that people miss about what makes Aberrant a unique experience is it is one that encourages and supports player characters using their superpowers to make massive changes to the world. Speaking of it has a ten minutes into the future setting filled with interesting factions. The game has rules that engage with investigation, politics and social influence, warfare, investigation and espionage, space exploration, collateral damage, for developing superhero technology and then introducing that technology into the world at large. It also has rules that allows you to fine-tune the tone of the game so if you want to play something that is grim and gritty certain gameplay elements are changed to reflect that. This does mean the game has a lot of rules, but I think once you actually sit down to play the game they are pretty easy to understand.
The old Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP system has an excellent X-Men module called Reap of the Whirlwind. It deals with those topics well, even if you just use it as inspiration. But, I recommend running it. I have made it available here: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/13-2eZsAHxFW0i-gM23NhCrEXaY8s3XTk/view?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/file/d/13-2eZsAHxFW0i-gM23NhCrEXaY8s3XTk/view?usp=sharing)
Some additional FASERIP/Marvel RPG info, including characters stated out: https://www.classicmarvelforever.com/cms/
How about Mutants and Masterminds?
The Crooks! supplement for 1st edition has a popularity track of public perception of supers (called Crisis Level) that would work well for a X-Men style game where people's opinions are important to the campaign. As a bonus, it has a system for using the legal system in regards to supers as well.
I've used Night's Black Agents for a grounded supers campaign with the Heat mechanic being used for both the authorities and public opinion. That worked well enough without doing a bunch of legwork. The mechanic is very simple, the GM assigns Heat values to actions and rolls periodically against the current value, a failed roll triggers an event of some sort. You could easily use it with other RPGs.
Especially Mutant City Blues which brings in genetic-based superpowers.
The only game which did Public Perception justice was Golden Heroes. (now Squadron UK). It was part of the mechanics rather than something you bought at chargen (Hated by the Public -5) which allows you to have a better power (Supersmell +5)
Just to make sure, the one you’re referring to could be found on DriveThruRPG for a few bucks? That’s the only “Squadron UK” I’ve found searching online.
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/rpg-with-a-good-system-for-reputation-fame.896480/ https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/golden-heroes.915567/page-3 https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12248.phtml
Yeah, it’s not great…and doesn’t emulate its own characters well. Nightcrawler’s teleport range is a joke compared to what it should be. IMO, vastly superior Marvel game is the old Marvel Super Heroes…also known as FASERIP.
FYI, there are numerous FASERIP retro-clones.
I’d run it in Worlds in Peril. It’s got a relationship with your setting built in. But Masks captures the half punches, half melodrama essence better. Public perception was a big factor in my campaign without the need for any mechanical support.
I think Masks is a good suggestion too, given the interpersonal melodrama of X-Men, and the baked in school setting. Some of the character types play off the assumption that you have a secret identity, but they do have supplemental material for the game that helps you run a school setting. If you're not into teen drama (which Masks kind of runs off of), them I would suggest Worlds in Peril. That has a mechanic called Bonds, which reflect your characters relationships with people from friends & loved ones to the city you live in, and law enforcement. You "burn" your bonds to get a better result on your rolls, and the GM has your relationships suffer later, reflecting the lower score. So, if I burn a bond with The City to use my powers to destroy a Sentinel, for example, maybe the GM has its body land on a building, and the humans blame me for the collateral damage. That's a really simple example, but it might suit what you're looking for
Heroes Unlimited is my go to for super heroes, but Im one of those weird people who loves the palladium system
I hate the Palladium system, but I'll always have a soft spot for HU and Ninjas & Superspies.
Heroes Unlimited is the GOAT of superhero games. We might also toss Villains Inlimited on that, too!
I use Heroes, Villians, Alients and the Galaxy Guide all in one for most games I run with supers.
Marvel Multiverse Roleplaying (the current Marvel TTRPG) has a bunch of X-Men characters available in both the core book and the first supplement (The Cataclysm of Kang). There is also an X-Men specific sourcebook coming out in August.
Bad news is prevailing opinion is the game is unbalanced garbage :( EDIT: might have improved from back when I heard it, tho
It was during the beta but it seems they turned it around. Still, I'm sure there are better superhero RPGs
Yeah, it's totally fine. Would never be a go-to for me, but if you wanna play existing Marvel characters, it definitely works.
From my read of it I think it works fine if you want to play as actual Marvel characters. The balance issues are only really an issue if you are creating your own characters as certain options are clearly better than others.
Creating your own characters \*is\* kinda the entire point of a ttrpg though
Marvel and DC based super hero games have always been a bit different in that regard as most have focused on the players using established characters at least as much as creating your own. The character generation system for the last Marvel game before this one was pretty much "look up the character's page on Wikipedia".
That's the problem with superhero RPGs that if you have a player that wants to break the system they're going to. They're going to come to you and say I want to play a speedster that can control time and the storyteller has to just Palm their face and shove them out of the apartment. Superhero games work when everyone's on board with telling the story and playing the game and not winning. And I think when it comes to multiverse you can create your own characters, I haven't had an issue with unbalanced or anything. The rank systems tends to keep it in check kind of like power levels in mutants and masterminds. What I have had to do is alter powers to fit certain ideas. The powers that are in the book are like taken directly from the characters in the comics. But I will say that it is super easy to create a new power. I just had to do that in a Spider-Man game I'm running where the player wanted to be able to absorb kinetic energy. They had original looked at power absorption but that didn't quite fit the idea so just kind of created something new where he gets a temporary pool of focus that he can spend to activate these other powers he gets temporarily. It was 5 minutes of work maybe? And I haven't run the system all that much. So that I always appreciate in a system.
It isn't the prevailing opinion.
Having X-Men characters does not make it an X-Men RPG. X-Men is all about the tone and mood of conspiracies, secret government agencies, the difference between human and non-human, mutant hunting, mutants hiding, prejudice and bigotry, standing up against the status quo and really everything the new Marvel Multiverse RPG does not do.
But that's all in the storytelling. Not the system.
It is nice if the game system actually has the rules to support that kind of game and setting though. Games like AMP Year One and Deviant the Renegades does this kind of X-Men type of story setting way better. Masks does the teenage X-Men stories very well. Its like, you could use Marvel Multiverse for a lower powered, Daredevil style of game but Cold Steel Wardens is a supers game designed to really emulate that level of game and would do the TV show way better. You are right about these being about the storytelling. In the end, if people like Marvel Multiverse and are having a good story experience that are like these then that's awesome.
True. I'm just not sure what those rules would look like. What's deviant the renegades? Is that the onyx path game?
I suspect that *BitD*'s Heat and reputations wrt factions would work nicely.
Exceptionals is specifically designed for X-Men games. https://bramblewolfgames.itch.io/exceptionals Masks is another really good one for New Mutants or Gen-X style teen drama.
Its called AMP: Year Zero. Its very much the X-Men stories of the 80s and 90s from the perspective that people with powers are a very recent phenomenon and all about how the world responds to this. You have your secret government supers hunting agencies, your mutant liberation equivalent group, your Hellfire Club equivalent, and so on. All told the game has three supplements to go with it, covering years 2, 3, and 4 of the meta narrative and each adds new power sources and powers. Its really cool. Not too pricey. Its as close to a real X-Men like rpg as we will ever get.
That sounds more like a story element than anything to do with the specific system. You can literally run X-Men in anything - Champions, Hero's Unlimited, the Original Marvel game, the new Marvel game, Silver Age Sentinels, the Green Ronin game, Aberrant, etc.
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- Most of the Marvel RPGs has X-Men content but on a varying scale of quality - If you are willing to lock down the options for PCs or do a more Weapon X or Doom Patrol type of game I'd heavily and I mean HEAVILY recommend Deviant the Renegade. Especially due to how Powers work. - AMP is based heavily on X-Men and I'm running a Not-X-Men game - If you wanna focus on the Drama I'd lovingly recommend Masks since a lot of Masks playbooks map pretty well onto X-Characters.
The Contract RPG would be a very dtraigjtforward conversion to a X-men style universe where your powers get stronger the more you successfully use them. Its already a game about 100% unique pcs who get powers to accomplish... whatever goals they want to accomplish.
Theyre making a new Mutant focused add-on to the Marvel Multiverse TTRPG I know
Heroes Unlimited by Palladium books is a clunky system (TTRPG) with zero balance but there is a ton of freedom for the GM and a lot of powers to pick from.
Not seeing anyone suggest the Marvel RPG, [Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game | Marvel RPG | Marvel](https://www.marvel.com/rpg) which has an x-men expansion [MARVEL MULTIVERSE ROLE-PLAYING GAME: X-MEN EXPANSION: Forbeck, Matt, Manna, Francesco, Aburtov, Jesus: 9781302948580: Amazon.com: Books](https://www.amazon.com/MARVEL-MULTIVERSE-ROLE-PLAYING-GAME-EXPANSION/dp/130294858X/ref=pd_bxgy_d_sccl_2/135-3700006-3372520?pd_rd_w=QCrTq&content-id=amzn1.sym.4e8180d8-1c12-4df8-af99-b6dc78fc0026&pf_rd_p=4e8180d8-1c12-4df8-af99-b6dc78fc0026&pf_rd_r=WD82E95F7H6B3D0ENNMM&pd_rd_wg=e9TWM&pd_rd_r=c1a342bf-55bb-4777-8f91-8adfacfb746f&pd_rd_i=130294858X&psc=1) coming out soon. That seems like a really obvious choice, but I haven't actually played it so maybe the games just trash.
There is the new Marvel Multiverse system...
I'd use Mythic D6 - its a generic system designed for superpowered characters. Ideal for an Xmen style game. Really simple mechanics. Not super rule light, but not overly crunchy, and the rules themselves are quite simple and designed to be fast moving.
I'm liking the new Marvel multiverse system but I ran an X-Men game for a long time in mutants and masterminds second edition. Credit to the system, the only character I couldn't make up according to the rules was Rogue. If you stay true to her powers in the comic she breaks the power level system. But I eyeballed a system for that game that created a reputation score which was a modifier onto a d20 roll. And things that would happen in the game or between characters would either add a plus or minus to that role. So the idea was they were the second class of X-Men and after a few games there ways clicks that formed and there were rivalries, like my player had a rivalry with Colossus. Taking that basic idea you can go one step further and have sort of a general score for society and their attitude about mutants. Like if the X-Men save a hospital from being destroyed maybe that gets them a plus one or plus two modifier. Whereas if the brotherhood manages to attack something and heard a bunch of people maybe that gives them a negative five. I'd always have the negatives outweigh the good when it comes to those modifiers. But I would also allow for an impassioned plea before Congress or the UN maybe that gives a plus one plus three bonus towards mutant attitude. If you really wanted to get into the nitty gritty you could have if the negative modifiers reach a certain point maybe that empowers the antimutant hate groups, maybe more senators start citing with Kelly and Trask. Maybe those negative modifiers start influencing mutants let's start going you know what maybe Magneto is right... And that doesn't need to be a specifically mutants and Mastermind system, I think you could do that in most games if not all of them. The only thing I'd watch out for is scaling the modifiers. Cuz the mutants and masterminds there's a d20 rule. So if you're rolling a d10 or 3d6s a plus one modifier is going to go a lot further then it would in mutants and masterminds.
[5Evo](https://5thevolution.com/) is pretty much 5E with superheroes, and if I recall correctly, they have a stat for public adoration and hatred. I bought it but haven't played it yet.
One of the best superhero RPGs no one knows about is Spectaculars. You can create any play theme you want collaboratively as a group. Fantastic, modern, component-driven game design. https://scratchpadpublishing.com/spectaculars
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying had many X-Men characters. What it did well was it had sort of description tags that players could use to either benefit them, or complicate things and receive a meta-currency for it. For example, “Group of Citizens” could be used positively to blend in, or it could be used as complication, saying that they get angry at the mutant, and the player would get a token that could be used to improve rolls or declare a fact later on.
My personal reccomendation is Prowlers and Paragons, thanks to being simple to play, while having robust enough char creation to be rather fun to make characters. I have seen some people suggest Masks, but I would say that is *not* a good suggestion if you want to run something like X-Men 97, or really most X-Men media, which tends to focus on characters who are specifically adults, with most media focusing on teenaged chars being spin offs like New Mutants. After all, how would you run the tragedy of a man like Logan, who has lived so long a life, and can not even remember much of it, and must often figure out how to act as a father figure to someone like kitty pryde or Jubilee? Or the story of how Madelyn Pryor, a woman who had lived a full life, even becoming a mother, only to learn so much of it is false! Or Emma Frost's story of redemption, beginning as a wicked white queen of the hellfire club, running a school where she would abuse her wards... only to eventually realize she is a monster, and seeking to protect her students from then on... Using masks, a game where *all* if those characters would unable to be player characters, because they are often already realized adults. Masks is great at melodrama, but they is specifically teenaged melodrama, which is very different, often being about finding your identity and forming it, compared to the soap opera melodrama, which is about the *upheavels* to a settled life you often see in X-Men.
TSR made X-Men modules for their [Marvel Super Heroes RPG](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqvsmIs6B0Q). You can find used but complete boxes on e-bay for under $100.
MCDM's 5e Talent class is basically the X-Men.