Does anyone know anything about this game? I heard about it doing pretty well, but all the reviews I can find are either complete dick riders for the creator, or hate mobs wanting his head. I couldn't give two flying fricks about the "culture war", I just want a good supes RPG.
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Then look else where. If the game was really solid you'd be able to find more than just discussion of the politics around it. A lot of people jumped on the "buying it to own the libs" sort of bandwagon which is why it had any amount of traction. It is legitimately just a very bleh game.
Look into Mutants & Masterminds 3e, Wild Talents, Trinity Contiuum: Aberrant, or Sentinel Comics instead. Or City of Mist if you want something a little weirder and street level. Or Deviant the Renegades if you want something a little weirder than that with more focus on drawbacks. Can't go wrong with any of those so long as they're cater to the style of game you're after.
The game is fine the guys hallmark is autistic understanding of interplanetary systems. People get assmad about the guy and its banned topic at a few places.
I think fine is high praise. I think it's an overly complicated and largely unfocused game that seems to have gone for the exact opposite approach of most crunch super hero games. Most of them do the crunchy chargen, relatively easy resolution. Ascendant is quick chargen, very stodgy resolution. As such the game is pretty slow. Slow is one of the biggest sins RPGs can make. It's all well and good to have things take time away from the table but if playing the game is like treacle you just don't end up playing much of the game. Like I said, its just very bleh. You're free to like it but I think it's nothing special.
I haven't had the opportunity to play it yet, but the game itself seems very solid, and I've got some outlines for characters that I want to try. I'm not a huge fan of the base setting assumptions, but it can be largely handwaved and subsequently ignored by individual supes, so it's not really constricting in any way.
Why would you think that the resolution system is stodgy? It seems extremely fluid once you get used to it. It seems counter-intuitive when you're not used to it, but you practically just reference the table and you immediately know.
It *looks* way way worse than it is because the short-hand and abbreviations make no sense before you've read the rulebook. It's definitely a bit dense in that regard.
>Look into Mutants & Masterminds 3e
Almost good advice. 2e is way better than 3e.
I always felt 2e was a little too dense for its own good, which 3e rectified in my mind. I get the appeal of 2e but personally I think 3e is overall a better game. More importantly though I think 3e is easier to get into and would be what I'd suggest even if I liked 2e a bit more.
I think 3e also kind of closed some loopholes and made it a bit more difficult to abuse the system, iirc.
M&M is shit because it's based on a d20 system (which is different from using a d20).
Ascendant is fine. A bit crunchy, but all superhero settings are.
3e is far enough away from d20 that I don't think it has much of the same problems. I don't like d20 either.
See
for Ascendant thoughts but also read more games, man. There are PtbA superhero games, Cypher superhero games, Cortex superhero games, etc. Crunch is not an inherent factor of super RPGs. Ascendant goes further than "a bit crunchy" too. The rules open with like 6 half page tables, and it just gets worse from there. It has rules examples like this
>Suppose Stiletto (VAL of 14 SPs, RES of 10 SPs, 28 Hero Points) is punching Stronghold (VAL of 11 SPs, RES of 9 SPs, 28 Hero Points). Stiletto’s RV is (14 – 11) = 3. She decides to spend 3 of her 28 Hero Points to raise her RV to 6. (She cannot spend more than 3 Hero Points because of her RES of 10; 10 divided by 3 is 3.33, which rounds to 3). Stronghold decides to spend 3 of his 28 Hero Points to reduce the RV from +6 to +3. He would like to reduce the RV to -1 or less, but with RES of 9 SPs, he cannot spend more than 3. Therefore Stiletto resolves her Challenge Check on the 3 column of the CHART.
Every action that can fail requires looking at this god awful table
Yeah, 3e is less janky. Part of the reason it's easier to get into.
Christ almighty. I get people don't like math, but this loks like algebra just to punch someone. I'll pass.
It just as bad as it sounds. Every roll is needlessly complicated by that table. Because you can't roll without referencing it. That table is the resolution mechanic.
The colours, in order, are roughly super critical, regular critical, large success, small success, failure. This is how all rolls go.
>Let’s walk through an example of a Challenge Check. Suppose that Alice is playing Stiletto and wants to strike Stronghold for throwing her cigarettes in the toilet. Striking is a Melee Attack (a type of Challenge Action) that uses Stiletto’s VAL as the Acting Value and Stronghold’s VAL as the Difficulty Value. In order to determine whether Stiletto’s Melee Attack succeeds, Alice follows the Challenge Check procedure below:
>1. The AV is equal to Stiletto’s VAL of 14 SPs. The DV is Stronghold’s VAL of 11 SPs. Alice calculates the Resolution Value for her Challenge Check by subtracting 11 from 14 to yield 3. The RV of her Challenge Check is 3.
>2. Alice consults the CHART and finds the row marked “3” in the RV (Attack) Column on the left-hand side of the CHART.
>3. Alice rolls 1d100. Let’s suppose she rolls 39.
>4. Alice now finds the column on the CHART where a roll of 39 falls for row “3”. The color at that point is Yellow. Stiletto has achieved a major success on her Challenge Check
Every. Single. Roll.
I wasn't kidding when I said this game is slow. The number fetishism doesn't stop there either. The entire game is like that. See the attached table and know it has three of those. They cover Distance, Speed, Time, Weight, Density, Volume, Area, Money, Information, and Fame. Note how the density table runs out of examples because the game is a mess when it comes to scaling and they just left that like that.
Do check out the things I suggested though. None of them suck.
Anon, I've never played the game before but that explanation seems pretty straightforward to me.
>Compare stats to see which row you roll on the chart
>You can improve the value to roll on a better row with a pool of points, your opponent can offset that with their own points
>How many points you can spend are capped by a stat divided by 3, round down
If tables aren't for you that's one thing, but it doesn't seem that complex.
Yeah, I think it was the way it was presented and lack of info. I do understand it now, and it doesn't seem as bad.
I may give the game a shot and ignore the fricking coomerbait character designs.
>Trannies deliberately derailing discussions because politics makes the game bad.
Why are you derailing the discussion of the game to talk about politics?
>recommending M&M
>ever
Daily reminder that M&M is the worst supers system.
If you want a version of MnM 3e's customization but approachable enough to have players make their own damn sheets, I recommend Prowlers and Paragons Ultimate Edition.
I'd recommend P&P Ultimate Edition as well. With the caveat that it's actually a good system, unlike the garbage fire that is M&M.
I don't hate Mutants and Masterminds 3e, but it was due for at bare minimum a 3.5 Edition for some damn time.
>Impervious doesn't do anything that having a bloated Toughness wouldn't already do
>Almost everyone I ran the game for HATED the damage system but otherwise had fun roleplaying. Having to endure with encounters failing so many Damage saves, but not "failing enough to matter (-1 to a 20+ toughness stat lol) ", I think I have to admit it.
>"tradeoffs" means that you can end up with characters that are either borderline invincible against some saves while straight up crumple
>Speaking of resistances: Did you know that Constructs automatically fail any saves with the Affects Objects modifier? Have fun destroying the whole planet, no save things to spending several dozen ranks of Area on a Damage 1 Fortitude Affects Objects power! Or just take Alt Resistance: Dodge with the same single rank
>Healing is a straight up damage undo button at high enough ranks
>So many Abilities like DEX or PRE do not justify the cost of what they give you and what they do give you can be bought separately for much less points.
>Affliction has a bunch of status effects that are not created equal. "Lose your turn" and "-5 everything including the roll to shake this off" are in the same tier as "Lose only some of your turn" and "Be slightly easier to hit in melee and have slightly less movement"
>Extra Effort being linked to a specific fatigue penalty, as well as the shitty options that come with it like "+1 to a power...for one turn, for a d20 system that requires you to pass or fail thresholds by 5 for it to matter." Frick off. Should have been a part of Hero Point benefits too
Still better than 5e/10 though. At least I can make the characters I want rather than having to spend 100s of dollars for another handful of options lol
Have you considered Weaverdice?
You might not use the system, but it's not utter shit, the setting is quality, and has a lot of genuinely good things in it for a Supes game like how you get your powers, and winning social or physical combat on reputation alone.
...Worm?
Yes
As a note, Weaverdice d20 is a thing. It's balanced for usual Weaverdice roll 3 keep highest, but is granulite, since it's d20.
The downside to the system is that you need to "homebrew" each and every power for each cape.
Then there's Wd6 2.0, which. Kinda sucks. 3.0 is in the works
>I just want a good supes RPG
You want marvel faserip. Good news it is easy and free to get.
https://classicmarvelforever.com/cms/
It's also shit.
>Good news it is easy and free to get.
So it's exactly like every other game, besides the new ones nobody has shared yet.
It has Unearthly levels of nostalgia and fun.
>Nostalgia
Yes
>Fun
Only if you derive fun from nostalgia.
Ascendant is also FASERIP and compatible with the MSHRPG characters that have been painstakingly built by the community all the way back in the day
Universal tables are the simplest way to implement results based action mechanics which is what super hero games are. MSHRPG is the easiest RPG system I've ever taught anyone - but that was before these narrative systems like PBtA came around. They might be even simpler but I doubt very much there as balanced as the literally thousands of cannon comic book characters that have been built for FASERIP
Nobody believes you even play games namegay, let alone teach people games.
Keep pretending to be moronic and eventually you will be, Anon. Although I guess if you think opposed stat checks against a single universal table is an overly complex mechanic you might not be pretending.
>Keep pretending to be moronic and eventually you will be, Anon.
You must be a master at it.
>Calls someone moronic
>Namegayging
Oh boy, Smaug is here to be a moron. Why are you like this?
There has to be a better anagram than "faserip."
My brothers and I still quote "has trouble with doors" to each other.
It's much better than M&Ms, in my opinion but it's not an earth-shattering masterwork.
It's incredibly autistic but in a different way than HERO or Mutants and Masterminds, which are the premier autism super RPGs. Give it a read.
Also why is the creator controversial? I've played ACKS and I didn't see anything in the books that would cause people to try and crucify him.
He was employed by that one israeli homosexual that tried to grift MIGAtards back in 2016-2017 for six months and refused to disavow when it came out.
Just typical alt-right moron shit. He was Milo, Inc.'s CEO for a while. Which should tell you about everything you need to know.
That explains why he calls attack rolls "attack throws"
The fricking animal
Its has a simple enough core system with ALL sorts of autistic math for other stuff.
Personally, I'd suggest either Trinity Continuum: Aberrant (comes with a built in setting) or Prowlers & Paragons (if you want your own custom-made setting).
That being said, if you feel like mastering a system few others have, and enjoy a level of autistic crunch, then get Ascendant.
The art looks terrible. It has a particular audience that the creator is aiming at who buys into all that American exceptionalism shit that would be reflected by Golden Age/Silver Age comic books, but the art and the system are more suited for an Iron Age game. Except you still have these utterly goofy ass characters wearing American flags played completely straight. It's just corny as frick and devoid of any creativity.
It's very fun. Learning curve is a little steep but once you grok the supermetric system everything interlocks and interconnects very, very nicely.
I've never played Ascendent. I think I will now just to piss off /tg/.
I will return with a new thread in a month to tell you if its shit or if it's fun.
I expect to dunk on you gays for having below room temp IQ, but maybe my hubris will get the better of me.
that is some of the worst art i've ever seen in something sold by a publisher for money
Considering the way he draws female characters compared to male characters IN THE SAME PICTURE, I don't think he cares.
What, you're not into Homebargains?