A lot of new questions!

I thought about posting again on my “Sell Me Off” thread, but these questions were in different directions, so I just added a new thread.  As I think about how I do things in my current supers game, I wonder how things go in SCRPG.

My players have agreed to do the Starter Kit in April (after we finish our current one-shot game).  They understood that this is also a test to possibly replace Champions, our current system for our "regular" game.  For those familiar with Champions, this would obviously be a substantial tonal shift (though this campaign setting has used FASERIP, ICONS, and M&M 3e also).

1. A text question: I thought I had the most up to date chapter 3, but the Red Powers section has missing headers.  I assume those are Technological, Information, Mental, Physical, and Social? (and did I miss an updated file)?

2. Investigations: Fact-finding and clue-hunting are pretty common in supers games.  Do you generally run them as Challenges? Or just as standard role-playing?

3. NPC Heroes: If I want to have an NPC hero help the team in an Action Scene, how are they designed? It seems they shouldn’t be “full characters,” but it also seems like they should be more than “allied Lieutenants.” 

4. Minor villains: Have any of you re-used a supervillain that you demoted to lieutenant status in a later appearance? Did it work to make him or her easier to beat? Was he or she still interesting?

5. Alternative advancement: Unfortunately for me, my players are *definitely* the type of supers players who need advancement rules.  I *think* the rules in SCRPG will offer enough chances to see changes (even if they are just bonuses most of the time).  Has anyone tried the alternative advancement rules (turning Hero Points into temporary new abilities)? They seem like they'd be more to my players' liking.

6. Collections: I don’t understand the section on p. 40 (26 of 33 of the chapter 2 PDF) on Limited Collections.  It seems to be the rule I was looking for that makes it so that characters in a hypothetical 2-year campaign don’t have so many collections as to just max every roll they make.  But it’s pretty unclear and without an example.  Can anyone explain it to me?

7. Ending a session “mid-issue”: Our sessions often end in the middle of a fight or in a less than ideal stopping point.  Should the “issue structure” of the game thus carry over between sessions? Or should all play sessions constitute an issue regardless?

8. Finally, “bonus XP”: In Champions, I can afford to give bonus XP for various out-of-game things.  One player is an artist who draws character arts.  Another likes to do soap-opera bluebooks with me between sessions.  A third maintains his character’s Instagram page on Instagram.  Has anyone used some sort of mechanic to get this effect in SCRPG? Would a simple +1 bonus work? (It feels like a one-time +1 in SCRPG is worth less than 1 XP in Champions though).

Wow.  I realize that’s a lot.  But I’m having a blast thinking about the *possibilities* of this system and I want to give it a fair shot, so I’m trying to think how transition between systems and play styles could go most smoothly.

Thanks in advance!

1. Correct, and no, that's the most recent version we have so far.
2. Either way is fine.  If all the heroes have relevant abilities and can contribute with die rolls, making it a scene is fine (especially if there's a time crunch).  Otherwise RP is fine.
3. Not full characters, that's too much for a GM to create and to deal with most of the time.  Lieutenants with a special ability or two is good.  They can even just be an environmental feature with its own "twists."
4. I'm not sure any of us have that level of experience.  Good question.
5. Don't underestimate the Collections to boost power, they're quite potent.  I haven't tried the alternative bonus rules (not really "advancement" since they're temporary), but I can tell they aren't balanced yet.
6. You got it.  This is more for organized play, where brand-new and experienced heroes are at the same table.  That way, if it's a 3-collection game, everyone has 3 collections to use, whether they've been in 0 games or 30.
7. Changing issues mid-combat would be awkward but not impossible.  The only thing that has to happen between issues is converting Hero Points to floating bonuses.  Just make sure the players aren't swimming in floating bonuses all the time.
8. Tricky.  If you want to give a bigger bonus, you can give someone an extra collection to use that session, but make sure players aren't being penalized for having families, careers, or no artistic talent.  If they're doing art or something, it might be more rewarding to simply add story elements that tie in to their character.  Reward flavor with flavor.

Thanks!

In regard to #5, I'll just post a link to my contribution to a post about this very subject.  https://greaterthangames.com/comment/202977#comment-202977
 

TL;DR, Let players trade collections in for access to new/upgraded abilities/dice. 

Re: Advancement/Leveling Up

I haven't started to really worry about this yet, but when my players get to "Too Many Collections" levels, I plan to let them permanently "trade in" Collections for an Omnibus or a Box Set, which will give them some other permanent upgrade on their sheet. This might be access to a new Ability, a new Power, or possibly a Power or Quality increase. These will also be on a sliding scale, so a certain upgrade may only cost 1 Collection, while others might cost 3 Collections (or more, I don't know yet). I could easily see increasing a d10 Power or Quality costing a whole lot, while adding a new D6 Power or Quality is pretty cheap.

These will probably be pretty limited because I don't think the system is designed to tolerate a lot of upgrades, but to be fair, a character who can use 6 Collections during a game can do some fun, mechanicallly extreme and hilarious things... so as long as it's less powerful than a pile of Collections, I think we'll be fine.

I assume (possibly incorrectly) that at some point, some book or expansion will contain more refined "advancement" rules, but if that doesn't happen before I'm ready for my players to "trade in their old comics," then I'll be making up my own rules. :)

Godai and mistergone, thanks for those suggestions.  Here's hoping that there will be more formal guidelines before I'd need to worry about it.  I just know that it will be a question from my players *before* they really consent to try it as a regular system.

@MindWanderer: what do you see as distinctly unbalanced right now about the alternative advancement?

"Temporarily upgrade one of your Red abilities to a Yellow ability" is enormous.  That nets you one of your most powerful abilities about 4 rounds earlier, each scene, so about 8 uses altogether.  Many Red abilities are absolutely bonkers, and some allow extremely powerful synergies as well.  This is game-changing at a cost of only 3 hero points.  It's way better than upgrading a Yellow to Green in most cases.

Depending on your build and what you find yourself using most often, upgrading a die by one size can also have an outsized benefit.

I don't see anything that looks especially weak, although a d10 minion for 5 points could just die in the first attack of the session.  It would probably be shielding a hero from taking that damage, though, so it wouldn't be worthless.

Watching the videos (I'm presently in Season 1, issue 4), I can see that upgrading Red to Yellow would be way more useful than any collection of one-time bonuses equaling +3.  Maybe a 1-time usage of a Red in the Yellow zone?

You can do that with a minor twist already, so that's kind of boring.