Galaxies In Peril: Superheroic Roleplaying Forged in the Dark

Hey folks,

I’ve just put up our new kickstarter for Galaxies in Peril, my take on supers for Forged in the Dark. Some people might be familiar with Worlds in Peril, which was my take on supers for Pbta. I learned a lot from it and I think Forged in the Dark really solves the problems some of the groups were having with it being a little too nebulous for them. I talk about it on the kickstarter page but would love to answer any questions you may have!

In any case, if you’re into supers check it out! Our artist on Worlds in Peril is back and I’m really hoping to be able to do a learn-to-play-the-system intro comic like I did with WiP.

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Hi Kyle,
good luck with the campaign, I pledge for it yesterday :wink:

I’m very curious to seeing how Forged in the Dark works with superheroes.

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Thanks very much!

This looks super neat! I love the idea of the map expanding as the players Tier up.

Do any of the team concepts fit a “Justice League” or “Avengers”-style group? I like the diverse superteam options (especially the “explorer” theme for FF super-science), but I can also imagine a lot of groups would want to play as a “generic”/prototypical superteam.

The way you handle powers reminds me of the xeno abilities in Scum and Villainy, which I think is the right way to handle supers in FitD. How do you anticipate handling “always-on” abilities that players might not expect to pay for every time they use them? Like, if I’m a Superman-esque character, I get that I should pony out stress to punch Doomsday into the moon. But do I still pay if I just want to, say, crack open a mundane bank vault, or toss a car across the street?

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The “rebels” mode encompasses most of modern day Marvel stuff I’d say. I know it’s kind of strange to think of it that way, but if you look at it from the perspective of the city being a corrupt place rife with villains and factions that have an iron grip on it, then fighting to retake it is, in some way, being a rebel since you’re going against the status quo.

So there’s lots of room in there for coming up with your goals and setting up missions to get that done - it doesn’t necessarily have to be expressly and as overt as creating and leading political movements and such, if that makes sense.

In addition, the typical “protect the city” type stuff will go down regardless of which mode you’re playing in - those are events the GM will throw in for fun sometimes or as a result of GM-facing stuff like the faction game.

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Sorry, missed your question there about powers!

The way powers work is that you’re assumed to be learning to use your powers from the beginning, so you’re not Superman yet, it’d be more like Smallville where you’re learning things as they come up. You’ve got a summary of your powers on the left, which would be for a brief summary of your power set, so Superman would have quite a list of things like x-ray vision, heat vision, cold breath, super strength, invulnerability, flight, all that good stuff. As a player, when you start the game you’d write all that stuff in, too.

Then, through play, whenever you want to do anything that’s more than a normal human could do and there’s some element of risk or danger involved, you’d pay stress to use your powers as fictional positioning in the narrative, and then make an action roll like normal. If you crit, you get to “learn” how to do the thing you just did and write it in under the appropriate category (from which you paid stress). Once you’ve got written down and you know how to replicate what you did in a combat or stress-heavy situation, you no longer need to pay stress to do it in the future.

Depending on the situation, a GM might have you spend stress regardless to use your powers to do something (even if it isn’t in a combat or stressful situation, for example) to simulate you trying to learn how to use your powers, but every time you do, you get the chance of learning that action and writing it in so you don’t have to pay stress for it in the future.

In this way you flesh out your character and their powers organically in play, always grounded in the fiction.

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Really dig this. Gives the full “zero to hero” experience.

Thanks for the info! Just backed it.

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Awesome, thanks!