1) MASKS: my favorite tabletop game of all time. Simulates a specific subgenre of superheroes, but simulates it better than any RPG I've ever played simulates any genre.
2) Delta Green: The game that lies, that taught me to embrace it when shit is unfair and everything is on fire but dammit, you gotta go on.
3) PF2E: "Oh, that is what D&D 4th Edition was trying to do." And it does it very, very well.
@SkunkyLass - Have you ever tried the Supers game, "Blood of Heroes"?
@Sylvan Nope, what're its strengths?
@SkunkyLass - It also codifies things most game systems don't: how much "Knowledge" is covered by an Int score of "10"?
Their gadgetry system is Okay but well-explained.
It was also the first I found that used "Hero Points" to not only advance a character in power/skill but those same points can be spent to modify rolls in play. Very flexible!
@SkunkyLass - Sadly, it's been out-of-print for quite a few years, now. They got sued out of existence by DC Comics/Warner Bros.
But old copies can still be found on Ebay and even Amazon. (I've bought several so I have back-ups.) :)
@Sylvan Nice! If I'm ever in the mood for a crunchy game I'll try it. But the reason MASKS is my favorite is that it concentrates far less on power levels and far more on how a teen superhero melodrama works in terms of character motivations, relationships and negative emotions, which is stuff I very rarely see a game dedicate itself to at all, much less do it as well as this system does.
@Sylvan That said, I got a game coming up that's less about feelings so I might rec this to the group. Thanks!
@SkunkyLass - I love games like that! The old "Teenagers From Outer Space" was awesome that way and, these days, I use "FATE" for games like that. :)
@SkunkyLass - Primarily it handles the full range in power from young Robin and Sgt. Rock all the way up to silver-age Superman and Darkseid.
It uses an exponential ranking system and has just a pair of tables for how things relate to one another when coming into conflict/opposition.
Yes: Darkseid will obliterate Sgt. Rock without difficulty, but in a single system, they manage to handle every power-level of Supers games.