CoH: the pen and paper RPG?

[JayDeth]

I've been lurking these forums for a while. Ever since Aug 30 probably. Finally decided to make a post about this idea I had.

The title should be pretty self explanatory. I've mostly been paying attention to the stickied topics, so forgive me if something like this has already been suggested. I think something like this could work and work well. For one thing, as far as MMOs, CoH involves probably the least effort to play. I know of no other that allows you to set any ability to auto attack and since a vast majority of MMOs copied off of WoW, you don't even need to be behind people when using the Rogue/Stalker class/archtype. And really liked that. I could have fun and relax at the same time.

The only problem I see with trying to adopt CoH to, say, the d20 system is loot. You get loot in CoH, sure, but it's so very much unlike the kind of stuff you find in other games. In other games you get items that you can imagine holding and interacting with. CoH has recipes for neat little trading card type things that give bonuses when you collect the whole set. This does kinda make sense, for hero players anyway. They don't seem like the type to loot bodies in the first place, so even if some sort of item system was shoehorned into the formula, how would the non-villains get swag? One option and the easiest would be to just leave out items/enhancements entirely. I hear that enhancements were a later addition anyway.

I feel this is a very viable option to preserve CoH. The game has always been about the story and the various characters I made. At least to me. Even though I didn't frequent the unofficial RP server that often I'd find myself occasionally doing something like speaking in the third person. Because when your name is Lightningo and you're Spanish, it's like there's an unwritten law that requires you to speak in the third person. :)

Not only would the essentials of the game still exist, but we'd easily be able to put together the rest of the Incarnate story as well as the Signature Story Arc stuff with either some bright writers or, with any luck, help from the actual writers. Even if we have to make up our own story, we can at least give the Incarnate Arc closure.

As far as the Incarnate Abilities themselves, I'm fine with just leaving them out entirely. I like that it gave the devs a way to extend player progression beyond level 50. I like the story that went along with it.... I just didn't care much for the powers themselves other than Alpha which gets a pass because it's an auto. I really think the Incarnate path would have been better off similar to the Patron/Ancillary Powers. You know, with a theme that you just followed all the way through. Also, on the subject of the Patron Powers, those were just fluff as well. Ancillary Powers, for the most part, could be an extension of your preexisting primary and/or secondary powers. With the Patron Powers... you have immobilizing ghost sharks. :/ In fact, now that we have the option to, we could rework the entire leveling system entirely if we wanting. Sad to say, this is about the only thing in Champions Online that I actually like. The idea behind it anyway. Maybe do it more like D&D where you gain levels in a particular set of powers and can choose to start gaining levels in another, but be unable to gain further levels in a power set you left.

Those are discussions for another time, however. I have very little experience with D&D type games myself, but I could totally get behind a CoH pen and paper RPG. I'm mostly just post this to see what everyone thought of the idea. And I do know that there's a guide to adapting whatever you want to the d20 system, so all we really need is someone or a group of someones to put it all together.


On a side note, has anyone done some sort of montage video of the various zones in the game? We'll likely never get a chance to see them again come Nov. 30 so it'd be nice to reminisce. CoH always had some of the strangest architecture I've ever seen. Like, for example, that giant concrete plateau in the middle of Cap. What's up with that?

Likewise, doing the same with the various NPC archvillains and/or contacts would be nice.

This game had some pretty great visuals after that graphics update. It doesn't look at all like it's eight years old. Be a shame to see it all go to waste.

[Des_Tructive]

I've been running a superhero RPG built up from the nWoD System for three years now. The problem is that the system is more about drama than action, which is pretty much the opposite of what CoH needs.
To be honest, capturing the "feel" of CoH is hard, since it doesn't use many stats. A system without attributes and skills would make most sense, but then you might as well go with heroclix, or a tabletop game.

That aside, I could try to convert the superhero system I have to CoH, but as I said, it's a hard conversion.

[JayDeth]

Hmm. Well, I still think it would be worth the effort. I'll do it myself if no one more qualified wants to. Or make some sort of collaborative effort. I just really want to preserve the game in any way I can, you know? Pen and paper type RPGs just seem like the right direction, for myself anyway. It's simple... ish, and with some time and imagination, who knows?

And yeah, I know of Heroclix and I was pretty sure I wasn't the first to think of "superhero pen and paper RPG". I just want it in CoH form.

[dwturducken]

You might be able to "reverse engineer" a system from the stats produced by Sentinel+. I'll run it on a few of my characters (different levels, powersets, etc.) to see if anything jumps out at me, but it's been almost 20 years since I've tried anything like this.

Converting from AD&D to D&D and back was at least similar, but, for D&D/AD&D to Shadowrun, we just chucked the stats altogether and adapted an existing creature, for instance.

[malonkey1]

Well, I just use GURPS. That way, you can just customize whatever you want into what you need. I think a level 1 hero is between 200 and 300 points, depending on how he's built.

[dwturducken]

And, the game (CoH) was created by a group of folks who had played Champions as kids. Even though the 6th edition rules are designed to let you shift "seamlessly" back and forth between PnP and MMO, I'd go back to 2nd or 3rd edition, just because that was what I played. You can still find the books on eBay for not very much, but I happen to be fortunate enough to have all of mine plus the set that one of the other guys had accumulated. (I have boys of about the right age where he doesn't.)

[HEATSTROKE]

As a Champions player from the very first edition ever ( back in the early 80's ).. I would just play that rather the trying to create something new..

[Segev]

As tempting as making a proprietary system is from a design challenge standpoint, there exist perfectly good effects-based systems that will capture the feel of CoH quite nicely.

RISUS (a free one you can google at your leisure) is the simplest I can think of, but may be a touch TOO simple for most tastes.

BESM 3e (or 2e, or TriStat dX) can do it, too, and they're now effectively free if you can find them because the company that owns the rights went out of business. Finding them is the hard part.

Mutants and Masterminds - especially the third edition - is a d20 system...sort of. It's so heavily modified specifically to cater to superhero feel that you might not recognize the d20 roots if you didn't know to look for them. However, you can fairly easily build just about any CoX character in it, and it would be my recommendation.


Again, building one's own system has its allure, but it's a ton of work. If you just want this for personal use, then going with one of the generic-setting systems is your best bet; you can put the CoX setting in just fine yourself with a lot less work than trying to reconstruct the mechanics for PnP.

[Minotaur]

Would be interesting to see how far the people who were licensed to make the PnP RPG a while back got, and what happened to that work.

[Segev]

While it may not work at all for a superhero RPG, I just feel like mentioning that, a few months ago, I ran across the concept of nontransitive dice, and thought it would be interesting to have a breakdown of "stat tiers" in an RPG wherein each tier used one of the die types.

My thoughts went to "Luck," "Talent," and "Skill," with Luck being a stat everybody has, but some have more than others, "Talents" being a set of "raw stats" like strength, agility, cunning, etc. that people have in varying amounts, and "Skills" being the more narrow categories of "stuff you can be good at" like "fisticuffs" and "computers" and "dancing" and the like. Skills can be rated at 0, unlike the others.

The thought process went, "Better lucky than good" (which means Luck should on average beat Skill) and that Talent trumps Luck, but skill overcomes talent.

I had several competing ways I could see die pools being generated. You could ALWAYS roll Luck, and whether it was Luck+Talent+Skill for the appropriate action or it was "pick one" would depend on how the mechanic worked.

I haven't managed to do a lot with it, as you can see, but I just thought I'd share the thought, since we're discussing PnP mechanics here.

[The Fifth Horseman]

There was CoH RPG in production once - the demo game is still out on drivethrurpg and a few other places. It includes some explanation of basic mechanics plus a bunch of character sheets for canon characters. Perhaps some semblance of the underlying character design rules could be reverse engineered?

[Flashtoo]

I've made 2e Mutants and Masterminds sheets for the three of my characters that I care about. The ridiculously flexible M&M system accommodated them just fine; all that's needed now is a campaign setting.

[downix]

I have the CoH RPG demo and the ruleset it is based on. If someone were to spend time they could create the whole game.

[Olantern]

If people are just doing this for private use, sort of under everyone's radar, it's probably safe.  If the intent is to promote it and sell it, it'll run into IP trouble, because an RPG created by someone who hasn't purchased the right to create such a game from the original rights holder (NCSoft) is creating an unauthorized derivative work.  That's a (civil) violation of NCSoft's copyright in the story material.

If the intent is to discuss it and let people know about it and give it away, that's a bit of a grey area.  Technically, it would infringe NCSoft's copyright, but copyright holders traditionally don't pursue that kind of thing for two reasons.  First, if it's free, it's harder to prove damages for the violation (though not impossible).  Second, things like this are the way IP's become well known.  To give another example from the superhero world, if some guy at a comic convention draws a picture of Superman without the permission of DC, he's infringed various IP rights of theirs.  But DC would be crazy to pursue him for infringing their copyrights or trademark, because by drawing, showing, and giving away that Superman picture, the guy is essentially promoting Superman for free.

In a sense, whether NCSoft would even notice something like this comes down to (1) how vindictive NCSoft wants to be and (2) how much money it wants to throw at the issue.  Given the company's peculiar behavior, I can't begin to guess at either of those things.

[Zolgar]

I don't think creating an entirely new system would be a good call for this. modifying an existing one would be better.

D20 wouldn't be too bad to do, because the strength of D20 is that so many things have rules, but are tracked separately.

Depending on how custom you wanted to go, you could base the concept off of Martial Adepts from 3.5 D&D...

I could go further in to this, but I'm already late for work.

[malonkey1]

I don't think creating an entirely new system would be a good call for this. modifying an existing one would be better.

D20 wouldn't be too bad to do, because the strength of D20 is that so many things have rules, but are tracked separately.

Depending on how custom you wanted to go, you could base the concept off of Martial Adepts from 3.5 D&D...

I could go further in to this, but I'm already late for work.

Eh...d20's okay. I still say GURPS would be best. It's more adaptable, and you can pretty much model any character with it.

[Atlantea]

On the subject of the "loot" and why it was different in the game.

I never really saw it as "Loot" per se.

The trading card analogy isn't bad. But doesn't get to the heart of it.

What I saw in it was that the enhancements - TOs, DOs, SOs, IOs and IO sets - was a pretty effective way to fine tune a characters abilities in a game that essentially HAS NO STATS.

Every Scrapper starts out with the same stats depending on their AT. Regen Scrappers get the specific regen boost, Inv Scrappers got resistance. SR Scrappers got Defense etc. But within those, they pretty much all started with the same "Stats".

The sets and such were a way to have "loot" that wasn't really loot. And a way for a non-stat based system to actually have growth.

My MA/SR Scrapper is a specialist. He's possibly in the top 98% of his class in terms of dodging and avoiding attacks. But some other person might have - despite starting with /SR as well, taken a more balanced approach, opting to add resistance to balance out the defense.

In a game built on points like Champions, all this is transparent. It's right there on the character sheet (and kinda complex, to be honest.) In CoH I think the Devs rightly considered that most people would rather be DOING STUFF than number crunching. So that's why the numbers were initially not a factor.

[dwturducken]

Honestly, I have no idea why making a new ruleset is necessary.  Champions, in its first few editions, and GURPS Supers already do the job nicely. Trying to come up with a new system runs the risk of ending up with a muddled mess, like the old Middle Earth RPS or the FASA Doctor Who. Champions/Hero could be a bit math-intensive, especially with things like knockback, but it was at least accessible to the casual player.

[Zolgar]

There are a couple advantages to the D20 system:
The OGL for one.
And it's super accessible to .. pretty much anyone. The math is simple, it mostly makes sense.. it's probably the easiest Pen and Paper system to learn.

Unless we intended to try and publish the game, I don't think it would be worth using a new system, to be honest. CoH is a /video game/, video games and pen and paper games are entirely different beasts.. trying to capture the feel of CoH mechanics in a pen and paper game just doesn't work very well... so if people want a CoH 'pen and paper' game, use the world, tweak the rules of your favorites superheroish system and have fun with a group.

In terms of publishing, well, presuming we had the issues of IP rights out of the way... we have three main options:
Build a new game from the ground up
Highly modify an existing system
Use an existing system and just add classes to it and some new rules and create a "Paragon City" splat book with lore and stuff.

Each of those options has it's own strengths and weaknesses:
New system:
Pros:
We can do whatever we want and make the system as close to City of Heroes as is possible and/or fun.
No dealing with licensing for the system on top of the content.
Cons:
Time. Oh god, the time.
Getting new players interested in learning an entirely new system.

Modified system:
Pros:
Base groundwork of balance is already laid out for us, as are other simple mechanics.
Easier for people already familiar with that system to pick up.
Still the flexibility to keep some of the feel of CoH.
Cons:
Licensing possibly.
The potential of "I don't like X system!"
Trying to balance new ideas with a system not built for it.

Existing system:
Pros:
Everything is balanced and ready for us.
Pre-existing fanbase, including people who would buy the book for new things to add to their game.
Cons:
Licensing
Limited demand depending on the system used.
Shoehorning CoH in to a mold of someone else's mechanics.

[chaparralshrub]

I've been suggesting this as well. In fact, I strongly suggest having a separate section of Titan Forums for roleplaying to go up the moment CoH closes.

I also ask that they not go up until the moment CoH closes.