One of the games which influenced the development of Oroborus was
Challengers, Ragnarok's original superhero game published in 1987.
Challengers had an extraordinary (though now somewhat dated) setting and
some great adventures. One of the remarkable things about the setting
was that it predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union with eerie detail
and accuracy. Change a few names and it reads like a news report written
five years in advance of the actual events.
One of the big differences between Challengers and most superhero games
is that Challengers made a serious effort to incorporate the super powers
system into the skill system or at least into an analog of the skill
system, rather than handling them as an entirely separate set of unique
abilities. The paranormal powers system in Oroborus is an outgrowth of
this idea, but takes it farther and has integrated and systematized
powers even more.
One of my main interests in Oroborus is to adapt the rules to work with
my Challengers-like near-future Science Fiction superhero campaign. The
focus of this campaign is on genetically engineered humans adapted to
live in extraterrestrial environments and to survive the dangers of space
travel, but the requirements are similar to those for any relatively
low-powered superhero campaign.
The first modification to the rules is to lift the limit on characteristics.
When points are allocated to characteristics there is no limit on
how high a characteristic can be and no limit on how many points you can
spend in a particular group. For a lower powered campaign you may want
to institute a balancing limit by saying that no group of three characteristics
can have more than double the points of any other group. Removing the
spending limits does not automatically mean giving players more stat
points to spend, though you can do this as well. Probably the best way
to handle additional stat points is through the Bonus Point system.
The next step for setting up superhero character is to assign a number
of Bonus Points to the characters. For my campaign I'm assigning 60
BP to new characters, but you would want to assign more for a higher
power campaign. Here's a rough power-level correspondence chart:
Batman/Shadow/Daredevil 50BP
Iron Man/Fantastic Four 100BP
Green Lantern/X-Men 200BP
Superman 300BP
Bonus Points are spent like Skill Points to purchase Paranormal Powers
- probably called Super Powers for this setting. Bonus Points can
also be spent one-for-one as additional characteristic points for any
characteristic, or as additional skill points.
Players should be encouraged to think of a logical background for their
characters and base the powers they take on that background. One way
to encourage this is to suggest that they get a single Affinity, and
focus on building their abilities around that Affinity in a logical way.
The use of powers has a substantial cost in Fatigue Points, which
represent the energy level of the character. This makes it very
important to be sure that players keep track of the powers their
characters are using and how much they cost. This also means that
powerful characters will get wiped out extremely quickly, and this needs
to be compensated for. For example, a character with the ability to turn
invisible [Masking (Knowledge) from Vision (Sensory)] will have a cost of
1120 AP (20x8x7) and 23 FP for a 10 minute duration. Since the average
character has 50 FP, that means that turning invisible for about 23
minutes will exhaust the character.
The impact of fatigue in a superhero campaign is very significant, and
you should tell your players what to expect from the start. They can
deal with this factor by increasing their Strength and Will, but the
best way to handle it is to give the character a power source using the
Empowerment Ability. For example, a character might get [Generate (Empowerment) from
Sun (Cosmological)] to generate additional Fatigue Points by solar power.
To generate 50 FP while the sun was shining would cost 800 AP and cost
16 FP, so essentially it would let the character concentrate for about
3 minutes for a net gain of 34 FP.
A recommended change for this type of setting which would address the
Fatigue issue is to reduce all FP costs for powers by half, or increase
Fatigue Points by a factor of two. This adjustment is recommended for
all but the lowest powered campaigns. This level of cost still provides
a significant limit, but is not crippling.
In some campaigns you may wish to provide an additional limit on powers,
or you may wish to eliminate or reduce the impact of Fatigue Points. For
a full-fledged, four-color superhero game the Fatigue limit is likely to
be too restricting, though for a lower powered campaign it is more
interesting. For these high-powered campaigns, assign characters a number
of Power Points. You can either assign these as a fixed amount, or
allow them to spend Bonus Points to buy Power Points at 1 BP per 5 PP
bought. In a Power Point based system, reduce FP costs by a factor of
10, add that to the Power Rating of the power and have them pay that cost
out of their fund of Power Points. Let Power Points regenerate fully
over the course of a day. Of course, for the ultimate in high-power
play, just don't charge anything for the use of powers, leaving the cost
of purchasing them as the main restriction.
Players also need to be aware that just learning Affinity and Ability
skills is not the same as having super powers. It can be very desirable
to define specific uses of these skills in advance. Either encourage your
players to work out specific powers before play starts, or even make it
mandatory that they establish a certain number of set ways in which they
use the skills they have, and give them a bonus with predetermined powers
or a penalty with new powers made up on the fly. The easiest way to
handle this is to say that AP costs are doubled for power uses created
on the fly. The flexibility of having a skill based powers system is
very attractive, but doing everything on the fly can slow down play quite
a bit, and it's not that onerous a task to figure out powers in advance.
To help you get started, here are some examples of popular powers:
Effect Ability Affinity Power AP FP
------ ------- -------- ----- -- --
Flight (100mph/10min) Transport by Air 23 2484 50
Armor (10pts/1hr) Protect from Earth 14 2016 41
Invisibility (10min) Masking from Vision 7 1120 23
Immateriality (1min) Passage through Earth 6 1296 26
Regeneration (12pts) Heal Human Body 8 1280 26
There are lots of other ways you can use this system, but hopefully
this provides you with a good starting point.