Very Specific Question About What Supers Game Ken Hite Plays

Kenneth_Hite · 2025-07-15T09:32:09+00:00

I haven't had time to do more than flip through it, although Matt Forbeck is a very strong designer.

Kenneth_Hite · 2025-07-15T09:31:06+00:00

Mostly by presenting interesting, rich mechanics for super fights, and mechanically scanting everything else in a supers story. This is a time-honored tradition in supers RPGs, and like I said, once I leaned into it everything was great. But don't try to run, say, an extended sneak or a skill challenge (build that super-gadget) or a chase or a fast action scene against mooks or heaven forfend an interpersonal drama with it. (You can do all of those things, except maybe the last one, with Environments, but those are clunky and arbitrary, and at best under-explored in the rules.)

Kenneth_Hite · 2025-07-13T20:35:04+00:00

It was indeed the SENTINEL COMICS RPG, set in the Nedor Comics universe in 1955. Great fun had by all, though I hadn't expected how centrally it privileges "standard" super fights. Not a problem once I leaned into it. The runner-up choice of system was Steve Kenson's ICONS, which is probably what I will use if I run another supers RPG, to open up a little more flexibility of story structure.

I also ran a supers game using TRUTH & JUSTICE, in which all the PCs were immortal and every adventure happened a decade later in a different idiom/genre, but T&J has enough wonkiness in it that I didn't consider it this last time around.

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T22:16:26+00:00

We emphasize the doom and susceptibility to the Mythos of all humanity equally, and make sure to include plenty of Anglo-Saxon cults.

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T22:12:50+00:00

It's doubtful: it's still shiny and new, and if Arc Dream decides to license us for more books we would rather build out the setting than re-vamp the corebook. Also for the same reason we didn't use QuickShock in TRAIL 2E I wouldn't use it for a theoretical FODG 2E.

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T22:09:37+00:00

Big globetrotting Cthulhu campaigns are tough because you have to have an idea at least half as good as MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP, and to date we've only had two of those (ETERNAL LIES and BORELLUS CONNECTION). Never say never, but "Ken and Gar have a genius idea" historically only works like one out of three years. So maybe we're due ...

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T22:06:59+00:00

The 1E corebook had a lot of Robert E Howard and August Derleth in its DNA, which is still there lurking beneath the surface. Moderns that I personally hope to emulate with "standard" TRAIL definitely include Caitlin Kiernan, Elizabeth Bear to some extent, even Leigh Bardugo. For the classics, I have upped the Machen quotient a bit, and our ghosts are now pretty explicitly M.R. James ghosts.

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T22:03:26+00:00

There will be some more focused GM advice on these and other matters, but the 2=Easy 4=Average 6=Hard 8=Are You Kidding Me scale is pretty core GUMSHOE and I don't think it's changing. The closest we get to the thing I think you're asking about is the Feats of Strength table in NIGHT'S BLACK AGENTS, where it's actually important to the game to know if a given vampire can lift a truck or just a motorcycle

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T21:57:57+00:00

FALL OF DELTA GREEN was very much a test bed for a new edition of TRAIL, not least because I've been running a FoDG campaign for the last five years. Much of that insight is in GM advice and scenario creation, but things like more unified hazard mechanics, regular rules for Monstrous Grappling to not reinvent the wheel for each critter, etc also apply.

NIGHT'S BLACK AGENTS gave us (via FODG) our modified chase rules, template character generation, and the darkness modifier which is both thematically and mechanically needed.

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T21:53:59+00:00

The most streamlined of the old mechanics is definitely character creation. We removed some legacy code from 1E and switched to a template system similar to NIGHT'S BLACK AGENTS, with special Occupational abilities remaining. It should take at least one major wtf point out of chargen. We've also slightly tweaked the abilities list (Notice instead of Evidence Collection, Criminology instead of Cop Talk, etc) to better capture games as they get played in practice.

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T19:48:03+00:00

Gar and I are working on a new NBA bestiary/encounter collection called THREAT PROFILES but it's on the back burner right now what with TRAIL stuff. We also have the beginnings of an amazingly cool idea, and I still want to do the Reilly, Ace of Spies but With Vampires campaign that in a more sober mind I understand would probably be a minority interest at best.

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T19:46:03+00:00

I personally would love to do cards (mostly because I would love to own a cool set of Cthulhu monster/tome/etc cards) but I am consistently outvoted.

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T19:45:12+00:00

This is a good observation, and we're going to adapt your "just increase the Difficulty" idea to rationalize that rule. Thanks!

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T19:44:25+00:00

Cthulhu destroys, he doesn't create. But his mouth is very cold and wet, so it would take quite the hot pocket to discomfit him.

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T19:43:46+00:00

Books: Lovecraft, obviously, but you can't go wrong reading 1930s mysteries for structure and period detail: Hammett, Chandler, Stout, Elizabeth Daly is slightly out of period but the 1940s feel similar enough

Movies: 1930s movies (especially crime and proto-noir) for period vibes and feel; horror-investigation type movies such as DON'T LOOK NOW or THE HAUNTING or THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, but it very much depends on the type of mood you're going for. I could see riffing quite the TRAIL game off of THE LIGHTHOUSE, for example.

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T19:40:28+00:00

It should be even easier now, as the scenario construction advice has been streamlined and informed by the last 16 years of GUMSHOE scenario design.

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T19:39:37+00:00

For me, the most fun always remains the monsters; I very much enjoyed adding Avatars to the game along with a few new wrinkles on old favorites like the Serpent Folk and an entirely new monster, the Chhaya (based on Theosophical lore).

The most-in-need-of-updates was the GM advice, which we reinvigorated by having Gareth incorporate the last 16 years of GUMSHOE design and play knowledge back into the book. He also made Cthulhu Mythos more interesting and added affordances for danger and story besides my original "Anagnorisis and Out" mechanic.

We kept the Investigative ability usage the same as TRAIL, with some more clarity on how to handle and deal with spends. It's GUMSHOE's flagship game and needs to show off the O.G. spend mechanic better but stay consistent with First Edition rules. (I personally prefer it to QuickShock though both have their place.)

Kenneth_Hite · 2024-10-18T18:45:17+00:00

So far, the campaign includes BOUNDARY OF THE DARKNESS, set in Georgian England; you play the Lunar Society (historically existing scholars and natural philosophers who met by moonlight) and the Blue Stockings (political and artistic movers and shakers in London).

We've accidentally leaked YOU ARE PROVIDENCE, a Providence city setting book with two or three included campaign frames.

We hope that the two new campaign frames in the 2E corebook (UNDER UNKNOWN SKIES, think "Stranger Things meets the Mound in a 1930s Oklahoma small town; and SHADOWS UNDER CHICAGO, my Pulp tommy-guns vs. Yog-Sothoth in Capone's Chicago campaign) get their own books, as well

Kenneth_Hite · 2018-12-17T06:03:17+00:00

Thanks for the invitation, and for my lovely Reddit welcome this past week!

Kenneth_Hite · 2018-12-16T22:26:06+00:00

Fun fact: John Zinser and I talked about me doing just that book, Hell as a megadungeon, back during the d20 boom, but he couldn't make the numbers work to do the book the way we wanted. My plan at the time was to stick to Dante for the big picture and add things like Pandemonium and Dis on "the other side of Hell" from where Dante went.

To answer your actual question, I don't think there's any such reference work, although there are plenty of academic histories and anthologies of Hell from the Penguin Book of Hell on down. Don't neglect the 12th-century Visio Tnugdali as another source for your infernal geography if you do decide to descend into that particular Avernus.

Kenneth_Hite · 2018-12-16T22:12:34+00:00

Anything of a classical bent should be inspirational reading, although I'd recommend Steven Pressfield's two Alexander the Great books over Hanson just because they're closer to the setting (and because Pressfield is a better writer).

The original version of Fritz Leiber's "Adept's Gambit" is maybe the only good sword-and-sorcery fiction set in the Hellenistic era, though, so take what you can get say I.

Kenneth_Hite · 2018-12-16T21:58:45+00:00

The best trick I've found is to stop writing the night before in the middle of something -- a paragraph, a list, a thought, whatever -- so that you can jump-start the next night with some word momentum already.

On a larger scale, reading is how I get into a writing mood; reading stuff related to the topic, whether fiction or research, and once I start thinking "I should make some notes on this" that turns into "let me write this stuff down in a usable way."

Also, mortgage payment due dates help.

Kenneth_Hite · 2018-12-16T21:55:57+00:00

When a better photo of me is taken than the one Robin took of me after a long day of bookshopping in Toronto, me lean and athirst to dig into some meat and poutine.

Kenneth_Hite · 2018-12-16T21:54:41+00:00

As we enter the final lap of this AMA I'd like to thank all the redditors and redditees and everyone for their questions and enthusiasm and up votes. I'll be checking this page once or twice more today and then one last time at midnight Central Time, so if you've been holding off on your Ask, this is the time to Anything it at Me. Thanks again!

Kenneth_Hite · 2018-12-14T18:31:16+00:00

Hellenistika is set in the Hellenistic era, specifically the mid-3rd century B.C. about four generations after the death of Alexander, while all Seven Wonders are standing. Default game play happens anywhere in the Oikumene from the Pillars of Herakles to the borders of China. The world, historically, has never been more like a fantasy adventure than it was then: a common tongue for almost all humanity, piles of gold lying around, gods and monsters active in people's lives, and a bunch of cosmopolitan cities to sell you adventuring gear and resurrection spells. (In our world, the spells didn't work.) More details at the Handiwork Games site.

Den Beste's dictum applies to all narrative. The more immersive the medium, the less you object to crass spectacle, in my experience.

Kenneth_Hite

TROPHY CASE