10 TTRPGs for a Different Kind of Superhero Story – Destructoid

The perspectives within a comic book world come in many, many forms, and there’s no reason why your tabletop shouldn’t have options for playing with those forms. Whether you’re on the hunt for stories about marginalized mutants, sponsored supervillains, or stuck in a school for the weird, this list of games is here to give you some options.

“The capes can’t always be There. That’s why There is BAMFthus the game explains.
Not everyone in the world is a hero, but that doesn’t make them any less capable. Agents of BAMF presents the side of comics inhabited by the likes of Phil Coulson or Hellboy. Here, players take on the role of super agents working for the kind of alphabet soup organization you’d expect to see in comics (SHIELD, The BPRD, Checkmate, AEGIS). The game is forged from OSR principals, meaning that people with some familiarity with D&D, Boy Scoutor Dark castle will quickly feel at home as they defeat supervillains and strange monsters.

Imagine the clock ticking toward the day of judgment, stark in its monotony against a colorful background, yet still ticking, endlessly, toward the end, no matter how hard you try to study it. That, in short, is what you will find in Masks of the Masks. Inspired by, and recreated on every page, stories like Guards Deconstructing the superhero, this game is dripping with style and substance. Built on the back of the Powered by the Apocalypse system, this game sees you create heroes who… aren’t necessarily okay… and find themselves solving a conspiracy that will likely always end in disaster.

Cyberpunk isn’t often a genre associated with superheroes. Yet, Neo Guanabara follows in the footsteps of those brave few, such as Batman Further, Spiderman 2099and, I think, Loonatics Unleashed. Create your perfect hero with custom stats designed to represent their abilities and prepare to battle criminal gangs, megacorporations, and oppressive governments. The game features systems to keep the city flexible and ensure that the impact your heroes leave on the city is felt. Neo Guanabara iterates on mechanics similar to the Cortex System, meaning anyone who played Marvel Heroic Roleplaying before it went out of print will be familiar with Neo.

Why bother being a hero at all? Why not give yourself over to the other side? The League of Villainous Fucks is always looking for people determined to fight those pesky protectors. After all, the villain is just as important to the story as the hero. Villainous fucks is Illuminated by Lumen, so it’s designed for fast play and even faster action. The rules-lite design means it’s made for quickly building a character, defining your villain’s powers, and then jumping straight into the action where you’re wreaking havoc and destroying anyone who thinks they need to stop you. What’s not to like about your new job?

Marvel’s greatest joy Defenders Netflix shows the knowledge, for example, that Daredevil puts himself through hell to protect a twelve-block area in the middle of Manhattan. No game captures that atmosphere as well as Take to the streets does. You will always feel like you are giving everything you have to defend, just like a single apartment building. Take to the streets reduces your stats down to the details of each body part, despite the fast d6-slinging system. It really makes you feel like you’re dragging every inch of yourself forward to protect what you have.

We’ve all seen some variation on an X-Men story where we That future where the Sentinels win. Dystopian visions of mutant oppression and police state-induced societal decline can be seen in Days of Future Past, Logan, and X-Men ’97. Mutants in the Night drops you directly into that future and then asks you to survive within it. You’re given a variety of powers to customize your characters, in addition to all the factions and problems that occupy the Mutant Safe Zone you all live in. Mutants in the night uses Forged In The Dark to expertly strike the balance between story-driven and unforgiving.

Maybe you’re looking for a game that’s a little more relaxing for a game night. One unique force is a world-building game where you have to create a cast of super-powered people and their world. You simply have to create individuals who have powers that are not found anywhere else, that are completely unique to them. The premise itself is based on media like My Hero Academywhere no one on earth has the same power as anyone else. If you ever want to build a superpowered campaign, this is the best way to get your party emotionally invested in the NPCs.

It’s human nature to want to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Maybe you don’t want to be a turtle specifically, but you want to be an animal that fights ninjas and robots and aliens and whatever else you can think of. Mutants in the Now is here to satisfy that desire. This game asks you to become a mutated creature with nearly limitless ways to fight the forces of evil. If there’s one thing I’d like to tell you about this game, it’s that it has options. Options for animals, options for powers, options for ways to fight. The expansion, Mutants in the followingdoubles those options. If you can break through the paralysis of choice, there are endless ways to be radical.

Molotov College is a game about questions and super heroics. The main question is how to save the world when there is so much wrong with the world and with you. The game is based on the Belonging Outside Belonging system and is not just story-first; it is actually just story-only. Molotov College asks you to play a hero who is deeply flawed and not on the best terms with your fellow heroes, then confront those flaws and relationships and avert disaster. Its main inspirations are The Umbrella Academy and Doom Patrol, meaning that the particular flavor of super heroics you’ll be doing is particularly eccentric and begging for answers.

Earlier I talked about a game that depicts a dystopia for mutants. Now, to close, Exceptions brings us the perfect way to play out the X-Men story of your dreams. The tag-based character creation system lets you flesh out the ways in which your mutation helps and hinders you. It never loses sight of what makes our favorite X-Mutants so beloved, that feeling of building a community against the world that wants to take you down. Thriving in the face of adversity, creating a place you can call your own, and shooting things with your eye beams are all reasons why X-Men keeps itself going, and Exceptions never loses sight of that. Instead, it doubles down on all that. Powers are detailed and unique; all the while, you replenish your bonds and fight to keep your little mutant community alive.