I'm currently working on a superhero themed Hack and I'm facing a bit of a quandary of theme and game design, all because of a simple question.

Should you roll to use your super powers, or do they just happen?

There are cases to be made for each side, for example, a laser blast should be rolled like an attack with all the possibilities for success, success but, and a failure, but super strength? Your super strong. You should just get to lift the car, not roll and possibly face consequences for it. These are super heroes after all, they should be awesome.

So I'm theorizing and want advice from other Hack designers out there. Where does the line get draw between you can just do it, and you need to roll in the thematic world of super heroes?

My current thought processes says, if your power conflicts with another Move, Basic or otherwise, it needs to be rolled. So attacks need to be rolled, super charm mind control needs to be rolled, observing particular parts of the environment with super vision needs a roll and you get to answer different questions, but things like super strength, teleportation, flying etc. do not.

Maybe I should make a distinction between Active and Passive powers or Moves? Any thoughts and input you might have are appreciated!

Has anyone considered doing a Super Hero Hack of Monster of the Week?

I don't think it's to much of a leap from what's already provided in the book and the Playbooks.  Probably the only thing that would need some serious working would be what to do with the Weird Rating, and making Tags and Moves more accessible to fine tune the Players Heroes.

Here's the concept pitch...

Heroes use the same basic rules as Monster of the Week.  There are several new Playbooks based around heroic and comic trope archetypes.  These have one special Move per Playbook and each Hero gets three moves to pick from a Heroic Power Move list.  Things like Flight, or Blast, or Control, Teleport, etc. (if you're familiar with Mutants & Masterminds, you could really just take their categories or something similar).  These Heroic Power Moves have to be customized by Tags, three positive and three negative minimum but the only upper limit is set by the Game Masters discretion.

These Tags follow the +Advantage, -Weakness idea. So you could have +computer hud, -vulnerable: emp, ending up with something like Jarvis from Iron Man, or +stealthy, -worn for Batman's cowl.

Re-work Weird so it has options less to do with interacting with supernatural phenomena and more to do with unique super power use, making it more about power versatility than straight power strength.

Remove the Bleeding Out condition, and put in Bruised at 5 Harm, where it gives -1 Ongoing to all Ratings. Instead of Dead at 8 Harm, Heroes get incapacitated. It takes a concentrated effort on the part of Villains to kill them.

Most of the Monster and Minion moves already work in this theme (especially the Can Always Escape, and Must use Weaknesses) but there are probably a few that need to be changed to fit more with a Super Hero thematic.



So in sum, archetype Playbooks, custom Tags and Moves for powers, Weird re-worked, Harm Track adjusted, but otherwise everything can work as written for Monster of the Week.  Thoughts? Should it be done?