Flame On

Yesterday I played in a one-shot of Wild Talents, Dennis Detwiller and Greg Stolze's superheroes game built on the rules engine from Godlike. I've been wanting to play Godlike for a while now, so I was excited when Andrew posted to the Santa Barbara Gaming list about it. He had laid out about two pages of setting material ahead of time, but character creation started from pretty much a blank slate when we showed up. I was pleased at how quickly (relatively speaking) we were able to get through that, even if my character concept didn't completely solidify until halfway through play. I opted for a character with a single power, Create Fire, and dumped about half of my points into it. As a result, I was devastatingly effective at creating fire, to the extent that there was a pretty good chance I could take down our brick in two rounds. This made it all the more amusing that I didn't end up using my power until the final scene.

Character creation was nice and speedy, as I've said, and the resolution mechanics are as well. In play, Wild Talents occupies a nice middle ground between HERO/GURPS on one end the spectrum and Truth & Justice on the other. It allows for more character differentiation and tactical options than T&J does, but it moves much, much faster than HERO or GURPS. I liked it, though I think I prefer it on the lower power end. It is, as Ted observed, a fairly game-y sytstem, which is certainly a change from what I've been doing recently. I may have to think about running a Godlike game at some point.

Outside of the system, I have to say that it was one of the best GMed games I've played in a while. Andrew had a great sense of what was going on with everyone at all times and really kept things moving. It took me a while to figure out my character's personality (I started out a little too Liz Sherman-esque and drifted in very different direction), but that was really my own problem. As I've said, it's hard for me to just be a player, but I had really good time in this one. So, yes, it was a good afternoon. I should do more of those.