Features
DC Heroes' design was distinctive, and was further refined by a second and third edition. Remarkably, most of these features from 1989 would not be out of place in a modern game. Some of its notable features are :
- A unified scale ("Attribute Points" or APs) measuring weight, distance, time, volume, money and information. This allows for quickly evaluating the feasibility and impact of many actions, even at non-intuitive scales. For instance, your Strength in APs minus the weight of an object in APs is the APs of distance you can throw that object.
- An exponential progression of Attributes Points -- a score of 4 corresponds to twice the quantity of a score of 3, a score of 5 is twice as good as a score of 4 and thus four times as good as score of 3, etc. This rapid progression is a sweet spot to handle both Superman and Jimmy Olsen without using huge numbers, but without drowning the differences between characters.
- A 3x3 grid of physical, mental and mystical/social character stats expressing precision, force and resilience in each area.
- Action resolution based on 2d10 (re-rolling doubles) and two universal tables.
- A list of broad Advantages, Drawbacks and Skills that covers most characters very well without being too expensive
- A lengthy list of powers describing concrete effects rather than abstract game concepts, and with a streamlined depiction of super-speed.
- A system of Hero Points spent by characters to enhance their actions. This very important feature of the systems expresses endurance, willpower, narrative immunity, luck, story flow, etc.
- A simple system of Subplots formalising character(s)-specific stories that run parallel to the main intrigue — romance, secret identity problems, day job matters, mysterious pasts, power complications, good or bad luck, public image problems...
- A simple system of Genre to change the texture of the game system depending upon whether you're telling silly Silver Age stories or gritty Iron Age stories.
- Technological and magical inventions, social conflict, special tactics and combat manoeuvres, improvised one-off use of powers, and other less distinctive subsystems.
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Famous quotes containing the word features:
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—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
“However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
““It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the windowpane.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)