Here are links to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 if you missed them. Anyways, this week’s post is going to be a lot shorter than usual.

After finishing 90% of an entry on Prowlers & Paragons I discovered Sean Patrick Fannon, co-author of the “Ultimate Edition”, has an extensive history of sexual harassment. The original version of the game that Fannon did not work on is still available on DriveThruRPG, but I cannot personally comment on its quality.

Part 5 will have a regular amount of games. Anyways, on with Part 4.

Prowlers & Paragons Ultimate Edition

I was just saying that I wasn’t going to talk about this game, and I won’t. Not at length, anyways. “Length” being a relative term when it comes to these superhero RPG writeups.

Even before I discovered one of the designers of P&P UE had sexually harassed multiple women, I’d reached the conclusion that Prowlers & Paragons Ultimate Edition wasn’t as special as its reputation suggested.

The core conceit of the game is that narration is won depending on if a player reaches a target number, or if they win an opposed roll. There are varying degrees of success. A player who loses a roll by a small degree gets to make an Embellishment, or they can make a Compromise with the person who won. These core resolution mechanics are really the biggest reason to play Prowlers & Paragons, because I feel like everything else it does Supers! does at least as good; Supers! is another d6 dice pool game that feels more intuitive without feeling less mechanically rich. Supers! is maybe more “traditional” than P&P, but I really feel like that’s kind of a reductive and not especially useful way of comparing the two games.

Something that did really disappoint me about P&P UE is that it takes a highly additive approach to design; the game boasts that the brief opening chapter contains everything necessary for play [excluding character building stuff], and that everything else can be added to taste. Many games do this to some degree, but with P&P UE especially it feels like something of a bandaid. Not everything has to use a big unified mechanic, but it felt like there were too many bits and bobs with P&P.

From what I’ve read, the original version of the game essentially has fewer rules while still being the same core game. This sounds like it plays more to P&P’s conceptual strengths. From what I’ve seen in the preview PDF, the original version of P&P has a decent layout and attractive artwork, unlike the original version of Supers!, which looks very unprofessional relative to Supers! RED.

So, essentially, P&P didn’t really blow my mind, but if the shared narrative mechanics sound especially interesting to you I’d recommend going with the original version of the game instead, which was described by the original designer himself as being more elegant. If I was playing with a mature group that I knew wouldn’t try to haggle excessively with the Embellishment and Compromise mechanics, I’d be interested in trying P&P.

BASH Ultimate Edition

BASH, created by Chris Rutkowsky, is another game I wasn’t planning on revisiting, but it often was compared directly to Supers! RED in online discussions, and so I figured it was worth taking a deeper look.

I’m maybe underserving BASH by mentioning it solely in relation to Supers!; BASH comes up frequently when people discuss rules-lite traditional supers games. It’s a beloved game in its own right; I often hear people describe it as being a rules-lite version of Champions. In my original piece I think it’s fair to say I was a bit unfairly dismissive of BASH because it didn’t seem to have the “Parker Luck” I was looking for, but I must concede it’s actually a solid piece of work.

The game opens with character creation. There are a couple of interesting quirks here that really highlight the game’s rules-lite approach. For starters, BASH characters only have three stats, which range from 0 to 5; Brawn, Agility, and Mind. There are probably a bunch of red flags going up in your head right now, the most obvious one probably being How does this game account for book smarts vs charisma?. But BASH has ways of adding in this granularity.

Skills, Advantages, and Disadvantages add some dimensionality. Skills are pretty self explanatory. An Advantage like “Appeal” [being attractive, or maybe charming] would simulate a more charismatic hero. “Uncharismatic” isn’t a Disadvantage, but it can easily be hacked into the game. There is also the Circumstantial Boost power, which raises a particular stat, but only in a specific context.

I’m overall not entirely sure how I feel about BASH only having three stats, and also each of those stats having such a limited range [0-5]. But even if it might seem a little too fuzzy and vague on paper, a lot of my concerns really boil down to vague Simulationist feelings where I’d want certain traits to be represented over time mathematically, and don’t have much to do with actual gameplay.

Like in many supers games, Powers in BASH are bought with points and can have Limitations or Enhancements. Powers are purchased with the same pool of points as stats. Limitations make Powers cheaper, and Enhancements make them more expensive. The list of powers here is solid and pretty normal for a superhero game.

Finishing off character creation, each hero is given a “Mental Malfunction”. A Mental Malfunction is a hero’s personality quirk; a good example would be “driven by responsibility”. This has no mechanical effect.

Let’s move onto basic action resolution stuff. Action resolution in BASH involves rolling 2d6, which makes it sound more boring and rudimentary than it actually is. Players who roll two of the same number get to roll another d6, and if that number lands on the same number again they get to roll further. Players then multiply this number by a relevant stat, with the multiplier possibly affected by Powers, Skills, an unfavorable situation, etc.

Every hero in BASH has 100 “Hits”, which is the game’s term for HP. Attacks don’t dig directly into HP; they first have to overcome “Soak”, which is a number that 2d6 are multiplied against to reduce damage. Soak is Brawn, possibly raised by Armor.

Hero Points are the metacurrency of BASH. They’re rewarded when heroes do heroic things, as usual. Five Hero Points can be traded in for a Hero Die. What’s interesting is that, if the GM forces PCs into “a situation beyond their control”, e.g. being knocked unconscious by gas with no chance to roll against it, they are automatically given three Hero Points. This is called a “Plot Twist”.

If a group is using the optional EXP rules, Hero Points can either be used to buy experience points or Hero Dice. I’m not a fan of this kind of choice in concept, but thankfully the game is designed around advancement being optional.

The GM has their own metacurrency called Setbacks; they start with two per hero at the beginning of a session. What’s really juicy is that, if Heroes do things that are cowardly or self-serving, the GM earns Setbacks. Villain Dice allow villains to do whatever heroes can do with their hero dice, but in addition to those villains can also escape seemingly impossible situations or perform a monologue that gives them extra Hits.

Characters in BASH can start a session with extra Hero Points or Setback Points depending on if their character is above or below the starting point number set by the GM during character creation, which is a solid balancing mechanism for mixing power levels.

In the last part of this series I mentioned that most rules-lite superhero RPGs don’t use miniatures rules, and so I should emphasize that BASH is the first game I’ve read thus far that presents miniatures play as the default. “Cinematic Scale” theater of the mind combat is presented as an alternative.

Combat in BASH is not nearly as loose and narrative as combat in, say, Truth & Justice. Attacks have defined effects, ranges, etc, and there are a variety of different moves that any character can do without their powers [e.g. wrestling]. These moves are simple to work out, and there’s a GM screen reference PDF that can be downloaded for free that describes in brief how most of these are accomplished. There are also specific rules for doing things like taunting and intimidating opponents, and there are some teamwork-related rules as well.

If a GM designs an interesting environment, puts down a few interesting villains, and creates some stakes [time bomb, bystanders, etc], they can create some very tactical combat scenarios in BASH.

The Narrator’s Section is located after the list of Powers. In past installments I’ve given games a hard time if they don’t place the list of powers towards the very end of the book, but I can now concede that it’s perfectly logical to make Powers the last part of the book before the part that only the GM is supposed to read . . . but I still have a preference for placing them at the end.

I should quickly note that everything before The Narrator’s Section is “only” 60 pages, and a big chunk of that is the list of Powers; there’s a fair amount of detail in BASH, but this is still a simple and manageable game. I didn’t mention any of the stuff related to vehicles or base-building in BASH, but they’re both in there.

The GM section in BASH is one of the better ones I’ve seen. BASH instructs each player to give their character three Subplots; one super, one personal, and one professional. More Subplots are organically given to a character as more stuff happens in their life. Heroes earn Hero Points for dealing with Subplots, and can gain Setbacks for avoiding them. This is both a good procedure for superhero storytelling, and a nice accompanying mechanical reinforcement.

The GM section also includes some solid random event tables, and it even suggests the incredible idea of making hero-specific random event tables. Something interesting to consider; basically everything I’ve mentioned thus far, except the metacurrencies, can be used in any supers game.

The GM section also has some fun stuff for villains, like specific Advantages and Disadvantages, as well as some detailed rules for Minions. BASH is the only game I’ve read thus far where I can recall any mention of cops [which are mechanically classified as Minions] getting into fights with “minion” Minions. Very conveniently BASH includes a little over three pages of stock Minions, with one of those pages focusing on animals specifically.

The Settings chapter is after The Narrator’s Section. Much like Daring Comics, BASH suggests actual mechanical changes to replicate specific settings, and even includes era-specific vehicles, weapons, and Minions. It also includes notes on the themes of given eras, story ideas, and viewing / reading recommendations. The superhero games that don’t just say “silver age” generally have some kind of an era section, and this is possibly the best I’ve seen; maybe not entirely as insightful as the one from Truth & Justice on an intellectual level, but exceeds it just about everywhere else. The cosmic scale notes in BASH are extensive enough that they could probably be their own chapter, and I think it’s safe to say that BASH has the best support for cosmic-level play out of any of the games I’ve mentioned in this series.

BASH closes with two appendix chapters; some stock characters that can be used as reference, and some alternate rules. The stock characters are designed to be reskinned, and are not characters with pre-written backstories [e.g. Sorcerer, Living Elemental (of Flame), Stretcher]. The alternate rules are solid; different dice systems instead of 2d6, advice for using hex grids or inches instead of squares, advice for theater-of-the-mind play, rules for fame and infamy, advancement, and a few other things. A one-page adventure is also included, designed to kick-off a campaign.

It’s worth highlighting that BASH Ultimate Edition has a very attractive layout and great artwork. The comic-style font used for headings actually looks nice. Everything is very clean, and the DCAU-inspired artwork looks good, unlike the artwork in Icons that failed to capture the same style. BASH looks pleasant and is easy to read.

BASH Ultimate Edition is only available in hardcover, with regular and premium color options available. It would be nice if a softcover option was available for people who don’t want to splurge, but the $34.95 price tag seems reasonable enough. I have seen softcover digest size books that somehow are even more expensive coughIconscough. Unfortuantely, the PDF is not included for free with BASH.

It’s worth mentioning that BASH has been quite well supported over the years, with the most notable supplement being the fairly recent [2022] Awesome Powers Omnibus, which collects most of the stuff written by Chris Rutkowsky for BASH after the release of the Ultimate Edition. It’s also worth mentioning there’s a fansite that can be used to create BASH characters, and Rutkowsky has made some free reference materials for the game.

BASH is a very well-designed game. If you happen to enjoy using miniatures and like traditional games, BASH might be the best option I’ve covered thus far. Its closest equivalents are probably the Gurbintroll Marvel Super Heroes retroclones [Masks and Advanced FASERIP] and Supers! RED. BASH is definitely on-par with those other games, but if you want a looser or more narrative playstyle [Daring Comics, Truth & Justice, Marvel Heroic], it might not be what you’re looking for.

These RPG.net threads are definitely worth reading if you’d like to learn more about BASH 1, 2, 3

Here’s a link to Part 5.

If you enjoy Sabrina TVBand’s writing, you can read her personal blog, follow her on BlueSky and Letterboxd, view her itch.io page, and/or look at her Linktree.