Character A Day, Day Eighteen(ish)

Tiny Supers

Because It Was Buried Near Where The Mophidius Star Trek Game, That I Was Going To Do Next, Was Located

Look, If You Think I Am Going To Be Putting More Effort Than That Into Curating This Exercise, You Haven’t Been Paying Attention

Alright! At first glance, “Tiny Supers” is anything but — it’s digest sized, but thick — or “thicc”, as the kids say. Or is that only used for living creatures? Is a “chonky boi” also a “thicc boi”? Can you be both “thicc” and “smol”? As a former English major, I find the watching the evolution of language, because Internet, to be fascinating. Except this is supposed to be about superheroes, isn’t it? Where was I? Thick. Yes. It’s 260 digest sized pages, which is not tiny — or smol — at all.

Having skimmed a little bit, though, in preparation for this piece (and “a little bit” is all the prep you’re gonna get, for anything I do here), I learned the “rules” part is a bare handful of pages; the rest is setting. If I’d known that, I might not have glommed (“glommed” is a synonym of “yoinked”) it at GenCon in 2019. I prefer rules to settings — I can make my own settings trivially. But glom I did, and now, having glommed, I will read enough to produce a character.

Rule-Lite? More Like Rules-Weightless!

The mechanics are just barely more than “Roll a die, then ignore the result and decide what happens.”  You have a pool of 2d6. You make a Test. A die is a success on a 5-6; 1 success means you pass the Test. Some things give you an Advantage, so you roll 3 dice, others give you a Disadvantage, where you roll only 1 die. There’s a very small number of other rules. Very. Small.

There are no attributes or skills as we understand them. There’s Traits and Power Traits. The first thing is to pick an Archetype. Since I said I’d try to use my randomized Marvel hero in other Supers games, the most appropriate Archetype for Warburn is Striker, what MMO gamers would call the DPS class. (The ability he gains is that damage he deals cannot be reduced.) (For full details on Warburn’s origin, powers, etc., go check that posting.) Other archetypes include Paragon, Guardian, and Mastermind. I pick three Power Traits, though I can trade some for ordinary Traits if I wish.

I’ll go for Energy Blast (his “Disrupt” power), Martial Artist to reflect his combat prowess, and Super Strength.

The Super Strength power trait lets him do +1 damage with unarmed strikes, and gives him Advantage on Tests involving brute force. (Nothing I can find gives a hint of what you can lift with the various Tiers of Super Strength, or the “Strong” Trait. I guess the GM just decides if something is lifted without any Test, requires a Test, or can’t be lifted, period.)

Martial Artist makes me proficient with unarmed attacks and, once a day,  I can reroll a failed Attack or Evade.

I now choose a Power Origin, which would be Enhanced.

Next, a Weakness. This is free-form and means I am rolling with Disadvantage when in the presence of my Weakness. Again, keeping with what we’ve established for Warburn, I will say that after 3 rounds I need to make a Test to not be exhausted; when I fail that Test, the weakness kicks in.

I can choose a weapon group to proficient in; I choose Ranged Weapons. Not only does this fit my background as a soldier, it also lets me use my Energy Blast effectively!

Finally, I select a Belief. This doesn’t seem to have any mechanical impact, though it would not be hard to argue you should gain Advantage when acting in ways that directly support your Belief. Warburn’s Belief is:”I must expose those who consider loyal soldiers of the US to be disposable lab animals.”

And…. that’s it. This may be the lightest game so far, likely the lightest I’ll do, but I’m sure someone out there is convinced there’s still too many rules.