Super Vehicle Rules

 Mentioned briefly in the Vigilante Class for Comic Crawl Classics or Evolved I now present the super vehicle rules. I didn't really care for the rules presented in Evolved and wanted them to be a little more granular and potentially tied to progression and player choices. I wanted something that felt a little bit like it could allow choices for unique vehicles as players built them differently. I also wanted to tie it to the prosperity die, which this project will be using, when getting points for upgrading because we always see the most wealthy of heroes with these insane vehicles and super suits. I wanted something that gave players options and wasn't just loaded with bonuses to X or Y all over the place. I wanted it to feel like comic book craziness where a vehicle could be built quickly and we could lean into the "rulings not rules" style that DCC lives and breathes.

    The rules I present below assume using the same vehicle rules as Evolved which originally got them from The Umerican Survival Guide. 

     As with the other posts in this series, this is just the draft of these and a fully corrected, edited, formatted, and fleshed out set of rules will be presented when the book comes out.

 

Super Vehicles

Class: Vigilante

     Another class made for compatibility with Evolved and Comic Crawl Classics. This time I wanted to emulate a street level Batman. Batman the animated series was the guiding light of writing this one. I wanted the character to feel like a detective and a bit of a scrappy fighter. The Utility belt also felt important to the identity of the class. I really started to lean into the comic terminology here, calling sessions "issues" or things that happen off screen "between the panels". I think as I write these and my own superhero rules I'm going to lean into this more.

    You might notice that The Vigilante starts with a super vehicle but there are no rules presented for them. I promise those are forthcoming, I'm still tweaking them and will probably release them some time before I release the rules for the Armored Hero class. 

 

The Vigilante 

Class: Manhunter

    Lately I've been thinking about Evolved RPG. I'll be honest, I have a lot of gripes with it. It fascinated me when I first heard about it, grafting super heroic rules onto the DCC ruleset? Sounded wonderful. In some ways it nails it, in others it feels like it is fighting tooth and nail against the genre it wants to emulate.

    I grew up on Heroes Unlimited, I want danger. Some punk with a gun should still be a threat to someone who has no defensive powers. But Evolved pushes past this into actively unreliable. Powers are completely unpredictable and unreliable and Heroic characters die easily. The tone pushes far away from heroic. 

    On top of that, the original release went out... rough. The table of contents was missing, it was riddled with errors, wrong page numbers, missing rules, and more. It came out feeling like a game that was just shy of being finished.  

    Then I found the "Justice Edition". It cleaned up these errors, made navigation possible, filled in missing rules, but most importantly it stripped away the Evolved default setting which was mechanically tied to the entire book.

    Justice Edition has its own problems, chiefly its total lack of support for entire archetypes of heroes, Especially those who don't have powers.  

    This is the first of my series of posts to correct the lack of almost any other archetype of hero in the rules. Today I give you the Manhunter! Inspired by heroes such as the Punisher, Vigilante, or Red Hood. This is a person armed with guns, guts, and tactics they use to throw themselves into fights way above their weight class. They run on nothing but determination to finish their never ending mission.

 

The Manhunter 

Evolved RPG Rogues Gallery

I have a deep love for all things superheroes. I love Superhero RPGs more than almost any other genre. for decades I ran Heroes Unlimted but I think that might finally be at an end. Recently I got to try out a re-write of the Evolved RPG called "Justice Edition" which takes the system and makes it a little less at odds with the "Heroic" part of "Super Heroic" in it's title. I wanna say I adore this game. I think once it's been tweaked to lean more into being heroic it's the perfect superhero hack of DCC. It keeps all the same basic rules as DCC and keeps things familiar while offering a good listing of powers. If there is some traction on this post I'll maybe talk about the game itself more, in a proper review. For now, if you can get your hands on this "Justice Edition" do yourself a favor. 

 

    So while preparing for this game, I decided to include a rule for creating a rogue's gallery around the characters. below is the rule as it is written in my house rules document for evolved. The villains basics are rolled on tables in the back of the book and I flesh that out more, creating the character's rogue's gallery around them.

PC Rogues galleries

Below are the detailed rogue’s galleries of each PC hero. They are separated by the hero the villains belong to, their nemesis is listed first, followed by the lesser villains rolled at later levels. Villains always remain at the same relative power level vs the hero they are in the rogue’s gallery of. For example a nemesis rolled at level 1 will remain at the rough level of the hero, no matter how much the hero grows. A C-lister, rolled at level 7 will be a 1 HD and keep the same scale between the hero and themselves, meaning when the hero is level 10, the C-lister will have 4 HD with appropriate bonus increases.

The tiers of villains are as follows:

Nemesis: 1 of these is rolled at level 1. A real threat in a one on one battle
A-Lister: 2 of these are rolled at level 3, dangerous alone
B-Lister: 3 of these are rolled at level 5, not a threat unless working together
C-Lister 4 of these are rolled at level 7, unlikely to be dangerous unless working in a group or under another villain
Literally who?: 5 of these are rolled at level 9. Will likely never be a significant threat to the hero.

 

Here are some example villains generated for this game that I didn't get to use due to the player's dropping.

ATMenace

Rank: Nemesis

ATMenace, formerly known as ATMan, was funded and built by the IRS to assist with collections for the wealthy, to ensure that they are paying their fair share. Unfortunately there was a falling out in the department that resulted in ATMenace going rogue and desiring to deposit all of america’s wealth inside himself. ATMenace still respects Matt-Ter and when they clash it’s often a respectful battle and a difference of ideology.

Powers:

ATMenace is equipped with robotic strength, putting him far above most humans. He also has incredible processing power, allowing him to make decisions rapidly and adapt to new situations with little difficulty. He is equipped with a change launcher, allowing him to fire coins rapidly and with enough force to embed them in concrete.

 

Gilded Tide

Rank: Nemesis

Gilded Tide, real name Tel-Vathrin-Sovas, is an alien stranded on earth after an emergency landing. Her ship is totally beyond repair given the tech level of the backwater planet she landed on. In it’s hidden location deep under water her hidden ship acts as her base of operations. She is still able to use it for communication into space but it’s risky, earth is a quarantined planet, her presence here is illegal. She’s learned that passage off world with a smuggler willing to take the risk is going to be extremely expensive. As a result she seeks to steal the universal currency, gold. In her time on earth she’s found herself entangled with Mr Everything, in a hot and cold relationship, often clashing with him in her attempts to steal gold.

Powers:

Gilded Tide’s alien physiology grants her enhanced durability to survive deep waters and an innate ability to blend into deep water. Her swimming speed is an impressive 250 mph. Her suit, powered by gold, further enhances her durability, granting her protection and access to energy weapons such as a claw, a shield and a laser.

 

Major Rift

Rank: Nemesis

Major Rift, AKA Kevin Voss, was in the armed forces alongside Magna-Pulse but constantly fell just behind him in everything. Coming from another world and believing himself to be superior to earth men, he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder and this only made it worse. When they left the service Magna-Pulse became a hero and Major Rift couldn’t handle it, he also tried to become a hero. Unfortunately he turned out more villain than hero and ended up clashing with Magna-Pulse. On rare occasion they have been known to work together against a common threat but it always comes to blows once the dust settles.

Powers:

Major Rift’s alien physiology is close to that of an earth man and imparts no significant advantages over a human. He is a highly trained soldier and skilled in a number of different weapons systems and urban combat tactics. He practically wrote the book on urban combat against super powered targets. His impressive armament and grit carry him through most battles.

 

 

Mister Mankind

Rank: Nemesis

Lee Yen, now known as Mister Mankind, was never comfortable with the idea that aliens could be on earth. When they first showed up in the news he started to sweat. When one was hired at his job he lost his mind. He formed a group known as “The Sons of Tera”, he made himself it’s mascot, Mister Mankind. Unfortunately he’s media savvy, he knows how to talk to the press, he knows how to get in front of a camera and conduct himself in an interview. He leads his people as a heroic group but openly acts against alien heroes and villains. As Mister Mankind he fights villains he knows to be aliens but looks the other way when a human commits a crime, then battles heroes in the streets when he thinks they might be aliens, if he loses he plays it off as a misunderstanding but if he wins? Thats a win for humanity! What even he doesn’t know is that the group of arms suppliers who give him his advanced weapons and equipment are actually a distant alien empire with a vested interest in an earth that is hostile to the galactic community, hoping to be seen as the pacifiers of the belligerent humanity and gain stewardship of the Sol system.

Powers:

Mister Mankind is an olympic level athlete. His equipment enhances his human body to superhuman levels, allowing him to leap great distances and lift up to 1000 lbs. His alien armor grants him increased durability and he has an energy blade and a blaster integrated into the suit.