As a tabletop game master who loves superhero media, I run into a pretty specific problem with most superhero role-playing games: I want my supers games to run fast and loose, with just enough emphasis on mechanics to make players’ specific powers and specialties count. Superhero (and supervillain) stories tend to include a lot of combat and confrontation, and when my players throw down, I want them to feel like they’re in a movie, not like they’re sitting at a table, parsing through pages of stats and skills to determine their best action option.
Which is why Spectaculars was a nice surprise, and once I’d tried it, an instant purchase for me — especially since the physical edition is 74% off until the end of August.
I ran into Spectaculars at an indie RPG day, where a friend who’d just bought the set because of the sale wanted to try it out for the first time. So it was new to all of us — but the learning curve turned out to be fairly minimal. The settings book (also available separately as a $15 PDF) features a series of branching narrative trees so the players (or a GM working on their own) can pick what kind of tone they want, then generate an engaging, detailed world out of it. For our group, building the setting together was half the fun — after about an hour of choosing narrative branches and options on those branches, we had a world that was weird and wild enough that I wanted to read novels set there.
Image: Scratchpad Publishing
Spectaculars’ core rules (also available as a $20 PDF) would work fine for regular campaign play, but the set is designed first and foremost for pick-up-and-play one-shots. You generate characters on the fly by drawing power and identity cards that give you stats, with some surprisingly creative details to the options — for instance, picking an ordinary identity like “homemaker” still gives you excellent skills in “Read the situation,” surveillance, and charm. Your stats are all on a 100-point scale, and in any situation, you’re trying to roll under your stat — a basic all-in-one mechanic that’s easy to follow and that keeps skill challenges moving quickly.
What I really like about Spectaculars’ conflict system, though, is the “team role” mechanic, which is used to both set initiative order and monkey around with it. It also gives everyone an extra option in a fight. Roles like Leader, Controller, Tactician, Support, and so forth let players engage with each other and the combat in different ways. There’s also a robust, simple assist mechanic that doesn’t cost players their own combat turns, and encourages everyone to pay attention to and engage with each other’s actions.
The characters themselves are broad archetypes (Super Soldier, Sorcerer, Monster, Tech Wizard, etc.) with different options to add nuance. Players individually pick archetypes and collectively pick a team dynamic, which gets its own sheet and comes with a reputation tracker and some background info for the team. You can download the character and team sheets free at DriveThruRPG if you want a sense for the game’s options, and a simplified look at the encounter rules.
The physical game includes one thing I could do without — plastic trays designed to hold your character sheet, character cards, and the various tokens that affect power use. Those trays aren’t as attractive or functional as play mats, and don’t have much actual purpose. Putting that aside, though, I prefer the physical version for the extensive card decks: This game includes 105 different superpower options, which means a lot of mix-and-match options, since most characters will have between one and three powers. The physical game also includes specialized “advantage” and “challenge” dice that complicate actions in combat.
Overall, it’s a neat set for people who enjoy pulpy superhero adventures, easy-entry one-shot setups, and fast-paced narrative games that don’t set RPG mechanics aside entirely. But frankly, at $20 for the whole thing, it was worth it for me just as an idea generator. Even if I only ever use the card decks and character sheets as resources for other superhero games I’m running, this set puts a whole lot of nuance on the table. I honestly can’t remember the last time I ran across this much game potential at this price point. It’s… pretty super.
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