Search & Destroy started

I have started reading Search & Destroy. I can immediately tell that characters from S&D are not usable as-is in your Supers! game, since it redefines some scales.

More to come.

Time of Incontinence characters

Yes, the title is an homage to Dr. Christopher McGlothlin. Here are brief descriptions of the characters, along with some notes on how they might be implemented.

Sundog

At his peak, Sundog was a vital Golden Age hero who stood for truth, justice, and all of that. He was strong and could fly, but those were his only overt superpowers. (He aged slowly, which is why he still had his faculties right to the end.) He had a tendency to hide in the sun and swoop down on his foes (hence the name). His costume was a yellow, orange, and red boiler suit with a sun on his chest. He wore a helmet and goggles.

In ICONS, he might be something like this at his peak:
PRW: 5 CRD: 4 STR: 7 INT: 3 AWR: 5 WIL: 5 Det: 3 Sta: 12
Specialties Power (Flight); Wrestling
Powers Flight 6; Damage Resistance 1
Qualities Simple moral code, and does what is right!; Sets an example; Too humble

In SUPERS! you might try something more like this:
Composure: 3D Fortitude: 4D Reaction: 1D Will: 2D
Athleticism 3D, Awareness 3D, Fighting 2D, Presence 2D
Flight 6D, Invulnerability 1D, Super-Strength 2D
Competency Dice: 4D
Disadvantages: Duty, Mental Hindrance (Honour Bound), Secret (ID)

Apocalypso
Defeating the bad guys through interpretive dance and music, Apocalypso was a Caribbean-American musician who was granted these powers by the Muses, and it was filtered through the calypso background. Powers were largely musical, but the area effects were generally triggered by specific dance moves.

Sound like a stupid idea? That's what the bad guys thought, but they kept falling to Apocalypso.

At the peak, in ICONS:
PRW: 3 CRD: 5 STR: 4 INT: 4 AWR: 5 WIL: 4 Det: 1 Sta: 8
Specialties Performance [musician] Expert
Powers Blast 6 Extra: Area Limit: Preparation (dance moves), Force Field 4, Paralysis 5
Qualities Music hath charms!; I know you're laughing at me; Gossip

In SUPERS! maybe like this:
Composure: 3D Fortitude: 2D Reaction: 4D Will: 3D
Athleticism 2D, Performance 3D, Presence 2D
Blast 5D Boost Area 1D Complication Conditional (need area for dance moves); Force Field 3D; Mental Paralysis 3D Boost Area 1D
Competency Dice: 1D
Disadvantages: Duty, Low Self Esteem; Secret (ID)

Melanoma

Not a person without good qualities, but a supervillain. When you have the ability to cause cancer-like invasions in other people, you either embrace it or suppress it. And Melanoma didn't see a way to make it pay as a hero. So supervillain it was. At first, Melanoma was careful about hurting people but it became second nature, and went through henchmen at a tremendous rate, to the point that Melanoma had to be the first to offer benefits like dental and life insurance.

At the peak, in ICONS:
PRW: 5 CRD: 3 STR: 4 INT: 6 AWR: 3 WIL: 5 Sta: 9
Specialties Business, Tactics
Powers Affliction 7, Extra: Aura, Extra: Remove at will, Regeneration 3
Qualities It's a business; Careless about killing; Just until I can retire

In SUPERS! maybe like this:
Composure: 3D Fortitude: 2D Reaction: 3D Will: 4D
Athleticism 2D, Business 3D, Presence 3D
Vampirism 5D Boost  Persistant 1D Complication Touch Only;  Mental Paralysis 3D
Competency Dice: 4D
Disadvantages: Careless about killing

What's your game about?

SYSTEM: Any

So Howard Tayler was, as of GenCon, writing a roleplaying game set in the world of Schlock Mercenary (I think the Kickstarter is over, so if you didn't know about it, you have to wait until it's really available). The podcast Writing Excuses this week was about worldbuilding for RPGs, and the very first piece of advice from the guests was knowing the purpose of your game. Not the higher moral purpose, but rather, when someone is playing your game, what are they doing? What's the usual activity?

And for superhero games, part one of that answer is almost always going to be, "Beating up supervillains." Another part is going to be, "Encouraging fun at the table" (however you describe fun) which I prefer to "good roleplaying" because I have discovered that "good roleplaying" varies with the group and the player or GM. So can "encouraging fun" but you run into fewer conflicts about whether a particular action was angst or wangst.

But as it happens, I'm also drafting the part of one manuscript where I talk about potential rewards.

One of the things I happen to believe is that, when you get points for killing things, everything looks like it's got hit points. (I ran into the equivalent when running Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.) So what do I want to encourage in the context of the game? What's the point of this little adventure?

Back in the Herozoic era, when I began, there was a table for XP, and it had things like:

• Just being there (1)
• Long involved adventure (2)
• More than one session (+1)
• Outnumbered (+1)
• Clever, inventive, roleplayed well (+1)
• Characters totally failed at purpose of adventure (-1)

Now, that's not "Kill things and take their stuff" territory, but it is kind of vague, and you notice that only the lines "clever, inventive, roleplayed well" and "totally failed" have anything to do with what you as a player did after you got there. More than half was just showing up. Frankly, my first draft of experience looked pretty much like that. (I've been influenced, what can I say?)

Both Supers! and ICONS have abandoned that XP approach for an "achievements" approach. Minor achievements might be just showing up (and as I get older and life seems to get more complicated, I do appreciate it), but they can also be things like resolving the storyline. There's a little less of the "you showed up, you get a point" kind of thinking.

Still, they don't give you an actual guideline. In one way, that's awful, but in another way, that's great. You get to define what your game is about. You get to say what a minor achievement is, and what a major achievement is. In fact, Base Raiders formalizes this as goals for your character. (Some other time we'll talk about goals-you-can-achieve and goals-that-are-your-pole-star, and whether they're the same for everybody.)

Because you know that players are going to do whatever gets them character advancement. If it's "solve a mystery" then they're going to find a mystery and solve it. And, out of fairness, the GM better put the thing in there that gets them character advancement. It's not nice to say they advance by solving a mystery and then not providing one, or worse, by killing kobolds and then giving them a whole village of kobolds they have to save.

Frankly, I still think just showing up is worth a point, but why not give it out at the beginning of the session instead of the end? Every Supers! player gets a competency die, just because they're there. ICONS players get Determination points.

But beyond that... Depends on the type of campaign you're running.

You are the city's premier group.
Minor achievements:  Rebuild the section of town destroyed by natural disaster. Resolve the plot of the session. Protect your secret identity. Make it to your son's graduation. Have a date.
Major achievements: Rescue the mayor. Save the city from the doomsday device. Help the new team. Expose the imposters.

You are shadowy vigilantes.
Minor achievements:  Don't get caught. Take down bad guys without help.
Major achievements: Escape jail. Keep your secret identity.

You are students at a super school.
Minor achievements:  Get that cute MOTAS to notice you. Survive hazing. Reach out to the new kid. Survive the betrayal of the cute MOTAS. Fight off the bad guys from the rival school but be open to the good guys from the rival school.
Major achievements: Get picked for a super team. Pass the test. Discover and defeat the invading clones. Get the school to change its policies.

You are a supervillain's enforcement group.
Minor achievements: Succeed in the mission, which he will outline to you; keep your family in the dark; escape jail; don't lose any members in a fight with the heroes; avoid getting killed or fired by the boss.
Major achievements: Get a promotion; get your superior arrested or slaughtered; get your daughter into a good school; manage to hide your true identity all through Parent-Teacher Night even though rival villain or hero group shows up.

Digging a hole for myself...

SYSTEM: Any

There are a couple of superpowers that show in games where I look at them and go, "What?"

Now, these are perfectly cromulent superpowers. They have reasons to exist, and they fill those reasons very well. However, if you have a random character creation system, you look at the power and say, "Hey, maybe I can trade it for a Boost or an Extra."

For me, one such power is Burrowing.

I recognize the utility of it, sometimes. I think that the Troll, in ICONS, should be able to dig himself a hole where he can hide. I think that giant ants should have a way to make their giant anthills, and the machine from The Core should be buildable in your favorite game system.

But man... Burrowing.

Part of the reason is that it's slow. In some one-buttocked attempt at realism, many designers throttle back when it comes to burrowing, just like swimming. "Yes, you can burrow, but only at a speed that is one quarter of your overland movement speed." That's kind of like the M&M game where I suddenly realized that although the bad guy could fly, he could only fly at fifteen kilometers an hour. The heroes just paced him, occasionally whacking him like a beach ball.

We've got a game system where people fire blasts of concussive energy from their eyes, where people have mouths in their hands, where people make plants grow tremendously fast, and you're seriously concerned about how fast they can dig?

It should be a Bugs Bunny cartoon, where the tiny line of dirt is heading at the same speed as a running man. (And seeing the line of dirt is a complication or a limit.) It should be a total surprise when the building suddenly collapses because the hero has removed two meters of topsoil from under the foundation, or that the heroine uses her burrowing claws to trace a circle out on the floor, so they fall through, just like that woman in Underworld escaping.

Another part is that you start down the reasonableness path: well, if he can dig through gravel, maybe he can dig through that fencing that sticks down into the ground. Maybe he can dig through that concrete foundation. Maybe he can dig through that guy's chest...it's no harder than concrete. And the Champions players say, "Well, she can fly, so maybe she can go through water at the same speed. It's only a thousand times thicker." The characters just do it, and occasionally get a bonus when they launch themselves at the target like a cannonball. (This is one of the areas where the existence of bonuses and extras makes it seem like you ought to be able to or not to do something.)

Sometimes I wonder if there should just be a power called Movement, and the player gets to limit it by defining the medium...or doesn't. ("She can fly, and she's just punching her way through the rock.")

A special form of Burrowing might be an incredible knowledge of the sewer system—you know the paths like no one else does, so maybe you can get places no one else can. Your Burrowing level is actually your knowledge of the area. You fail the roll, there is no connection that you can get through. At low levels, that would work quite well, actually.

Or another special form might be a limited form of animal control: you can manage to control the ants and moles and what-have-you that they will make the space for you as you go.

Well, maybe Burrowing isn't so lame. But Dream Control....there's a power that's tough to play in a game....

Playing with a Supers! layout for here

SYSTEM: Supers!

I like the layout of characters that gets used in a lot of the Supers! stuff, but the list is, well, really list-y, and the graphically interesting stuff is beyond my capability on a blog. But one of the character sheets is mostly in my reach...

Dice	Resistances	Cost
2D	Composure	1
3D	Fortitude	2
3D	Reaction	2
2D	Will	1
Dice	Aptitudes	Cost
3D	Mechanics	2
Dice	Powers	Cost
6D	Elemental Control (fire)	6
1D	Elemental Form (fire)	1
4D	Flight	4
Dice	Advantages	Cost
1D	Charismatic	1
1D	Leadership	1
Dice	Disadvantages	Cost
1D	Mental Hindrance: Hothead	-1
1D	Public ID	-1
Total (20D character)		19

I mean, it still looks very list-y, but it's easier to do the math.

Fiddling with it:

Pyroguy (Tommy Drizzle)
Dice	Resistances	Cost	Aptitudes		Cost
2D	Composure	1	3D Mechanics		2
3D	Fortitude	2
3D	Reaction	2
2D	Will	1
Dice	Powers	Cost	Dice	Advantages	Cost
6D	Elemental Control (fire)	6	1D	Charismatic	1
1D	Elemental Form (fire)	1	1D	Leadership	1
4D	Flight	4	Dice	Disadvantages	Cost
			1D	Mental Hindrance: Hothead	-1
			1D	Public ID	-1

Second one is a little less elongated, which I like, but might have problems on mobile devices and is not as easy to do the math for.

In a layout program, I'd consider doing a list-like thing, then a second column that's mostly picture space and disadvantages at the bottom:

Dice	Resistances	Cost
2D	Composure	1
3D	Fortitude	2
3D	Reaction	2
2D	Will	1
Dice	Aptitudes	Cost
3D	Mechanics	2
Dice	Powers	Cost
6D	Elemental Control (fire)	6
1D	Elemental Form (fire)	1
4D	Flight	4
Dice	Advantages	Cost				Dice	Disadvantages	Cost
1D	Charismatic	1				1D	Mental Hindrance: Hothead	-1
1D	Leadership	1				1D	Public ID	-1

You'd put your standard stuff or your changing stuff either beneath or to the side.

Of course, the numbers are small enough (1-8, really) that you could do it more graphically:

Composure	Fortitude	Reaction	Will
0 0	0 0 0	0 0 0	0 0
Aptitudes			Cost
Mechanics (0 0 0), Leadership (0 0)			3
Dice	Powers		Cost
0 0 0 0 0 0	Elemental Control (fire)		6
0	Elemental Form (fire)		1
0 0 0 0	Flight Complication: Only in fire form		3
Advantages			Cost
Charismatic (0), Leadership (0)			2
Disadvantages			Cost
Mental Hindrance: Hothead (0), Public ID (0)			-2

That might just be a paper-only or layout-only idea. I've used zeroes here, but you'd use bullets instead.

We could combine the list and the table, but you'd probably lose in terms of calculation:

Name: Secret ID		Composure x Fortitude x Reaction x Will x		Cost
				6
Aptitudes	Cost	Powers	Cost
Academics 3D Mechanics 2D	3	Elemental control 6D (fire) Elemental Form 1D Flight 3D Complication Only in fire form	9
Advantages		Disadvantages	Cost

Other Genres for ICONS and Supers!

The Search & Destroy handbook modifies Supers! for action-adventure games. Since I don't have S&D, I can't comment on it. However, I can think about the qualities of a genre or subgenre and whether a particular game meets (or could meet) those needs.

Way back when Champions became The Hero System, I figured that any system that could do superheroes could also be a generic system. With age, though, it seems to me that there are some qualities that make a good superhero game that don't necessarily make a good game for another genre, though changing or bolting on rules or subsystems might do the work.

And there are certain genres where that might be true. But most genres without powers use skills to distinguish the characters, and a system that models superheroes tends to gloss over the skills, making them broad, maybe making them additions to your attributes, so that a character can attempt anything unskilled.

In order to fit in the characters who are super-attributed (super-strong, super-fast, super-smart), the systems also tend to compress the low end. In Supers!, for instance, aptitudes really span from 1-4, and everybody has a 1. In ICONS, the attributes run from 1-6. While that's not much worse that D&D, where the supposed 1-18 scale is really -3 to +3 (the attribute modifiers), it certainly feels more constrained.

What about the settings or genres where the characters have powers? ICONS might be used to make a kick-butt Vampire game, for instance, where your clan represents a set of powers you can choose from, and you all get one of a set of Qualities that reflect your clan and vampiric nature. You would have to bolt on the actual powers, defining them as necessary. You'd lose the blood points mechanism (unless you added it) but you could use the Qualities in the same way.

Supers! makes a nice action-adventure game (theoretically--as I say, I haven't looked at S&D yet).

With the right trappings, either one could be a nice high fantasy game, with races and characters who can eventually get strong enough to lift mountains. Both provide resilient enough characters that you could play something like zero-to-hero without worrying too much that your character will die near the beginning of the campaign. (I probably wouldn't go for straight S&S, though, but on the other hand, I have Jaws of the Six Serpents for that....)

Either of them might do well for some of the less-hard science fiction, too. They'd make great systems for something like Star Wars, though you'd have to figure out a mechanism for the Force.  (Actually, the more I learn about Kylo Ren's backstory, the more he sounds like a failed character in a Star Wars game...)

They're both best for comics. One is a little more four-colour than the other, but they're both good. And in the realm of comics, I'd love to see someone do the equivalent of Leaving Megalopolis with them.

Hey--long time no see

Happy new year, by the way.

It's been quite busy, but I'm not ignoring you...at least in the sense of not thinking about you, you inchoate audience mass, you. I'm sort of ignoring you in the writing to you kind of way.

Most importantly, it's been busy at home and work. That's certainly my priority. And I'm doing two adventures for small publishers.

The one I guess I can talk about (because Walt Robillard mentioned it on a podcast) is a Supers! REd adventure, which feels simultaneously too long and too short.  I worry that I've written it too long, and then I look at things I have to cut out of it, and I think, "Ohmigod, this will end up being too short!" However, it's gone in some interesting places even though I've been slow about writing it. (I want "careful" on this one--it's an adventure with time travel, and a slap-dash approach will only make trouble down the line--but I worry I've just been slow.) Call it Fall of the House of Echo, which is not the real name; it's just what I use to refer to it when I don't want to use the real name. That's pretty exciting.

I've play-tested it with Mythic GME and Supers! but I'm not really in a life situation where I can get a group together. (Something about work and commuting for twelve hours a day.) I've even found commercially available (and unsuitable) maps for three of the locations that might need maps, and for another I used the Rosie's Bar map from Champions.  I'll try to get Walt's permission to do another playtest with humans, by Google Hangouts. Drop me a line if you're interested.

I'll tell you the real name when it's available from Hazard Studio. Then I can add it to my tiny portfolio of RPG stuff (Assault on Precinct 9, from Fainting Goat Games, and two of the World's Most Wanted villains).

I'd like to collate all of the Fallen ICONS stuff into a single PDF to make it easier for people to download. I don't think I'll offer it for sale; I don't want to go through the hassles of setting up a OneBookshelf account. If I do that, though, I'll probably get Steve Kenson's blessing in the form of the ICONS-compatible logo. The other thing I'll do is scour the web for free or cheap graphics. The PDF will be free and the look will reflect that, but at least it can have a few pictures.

I was looking for something or other in the ICONS line on RPGNow, and I realized that there really are quite a few villain characters for sale. So I'll have to resist the temptation to kvetch and moan because, really, they're out there.

And how's your life going?

X-Men...really?

I was listening to the Play On Target podcast, where Lowell Francis interviewed Eloy Lasanta, and Lasanta mentioned his love of the X-Men. I've heard of this love from others and I realized that the superhero RPGs I love (Supers! and ICONS) do a more four-colour setting by default.

I was never a big reader of the X-Men...the proliferation of X-titles in the 1990s was of the reasons I fled to DC (truthfully, I had been a DC child anyway) and then away from comics. But I recognize the basic characters and I see that the powers approach of my favourite games doesn't really reflect the X-Men as I understand them.

Caveats that I might be totally wrong in my understanding so that True Fans(TM) might object. However, this approach might be fruitful in figuring out how you do things to more accurately reflect the comics. It's mostly inspired by Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (it's not influenced by AMP except for what was in the podcast; I don't own AMP and haven't read it).

When I look at them, the characters in the core X-Men and the New Mutants (again, circa the late 1980s and the early 1990s, when I was occasionally looking at the books) are mostly human but with one or two powers that make them different. As humans, they're usually pretty good...Scott Summers is well-trained, Warren Worthington seems to be buff, Kitty Pryde manages well, and so on. (In story, the justification is the danger room and the training.) It's not until later (such as in Excalibur) that you see any disabled heroes. Anyway, the powers are applied differently: a character might freeze a lock or throw iceballs or make an ice wall, but it's one power. We'll call it a theme. This is like the power sets in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.  (I don't have a list of themes handy, but I might edit one in later.)

Both Supers! and ICONS have mechanisms to handle this stunting: Competency dice and determination points.

First, we roll to see how many themes you have. We're going to use 2d6 because we want the bell curve.

Roll	Number of themes
2-6	One power theme (Colossus has the Strength theme; Angel can fly; Cyclops blasts things with his eyebeams)
7-10	Two power themes (Kitty phases and is smart; Wolverine has the healing factor and an animal theme)
11-12	Three power themes (I can't think of examples at this second, but I'm sure they exist. Maybe Cable, who has cybernetics, and the telekinesis, and being from the future and having that kind of knowledge might qualify as a third--I don't know enough about the character to be sure.)

Then we're going to figure out the width of your biggest theme. This is the number of standard expressions of your power. Iceman lucks out because he has three main expressions: ice armor, movement, and the ability to create things out of ice. Colossus has two expressions: strength and durability. (You might be able to call that one in ICONS with Alternate Form.) Cyclops and Angel have a single expression: optic blasts and flight, respectively. (Actually, you could make an argument that Angel's second theme is wealth but I'm not sure I want to go there. Worth considering that wealth might be a power, like any ICONS ability over 6.)

Again, we roll 2d6 for the bell curve:

Roll	Width of theme
2-6	One main expression
7-10	Two main expressions
11-12	Three main expressions

If you have multiple themes, the additional ones only get one main expression. (That's okay: you can stunt on any of these themes.) You get to pick which one might have multiple expressions, if any. You can run all of those main expressions at once. So Iceman, who has three main expressions, can have the armour, the movement, and the attack.

You pick (or roll, on the nonexistent table) your themes. Once you have themes, you can pick or roll main expressions. Those are the powers you normally use, but you can stunt others.

"Great," you say. "But what is the point?"

The point is that it's free to swap expressions or powers within your main theme. (In systems with a finer grain, such as Mutants & Masterminds, you might say that swapping within your theme takes a bit of time, maybe your movement action, but doesn't cost hero points.) To keep extra expressions up simultaneously costs a competency die or a determination point. To stunt in some other theme costs a competency die or a determination point. It costs two dice or points to bring a power into your theme, and you have to have a justification.

By defining the themes, we get to ones where it's difficult to use a power (it's from a different theme according to the homebrew rules we've just put down).  In fact, you can have character generation being constructing your theme, or players can add to the theme with experience. (That's certainly the only way to add powers or expressions to a secondary theme.)

Themes would include a particular animal or being animalistic; darkness; force; light; air; earth; water; fire; plants; movement; telekinesis; mental; decay or corruption; magic; strength; time; body alteration; and so on. A theme has one or more obvious main powers and the set of things that often go with it. A theme has, oh, five to ten powers in it--we're looking for comic book cliches here. Some of them will be contradictory...just don't take them both.

For instance:

Theme	Expressions (powers)
Air	Flight or Gliding, control winds, shielding winds, alternate form (air), gentle fall, shielding
Animal theme	Depends on the animal...Power mimicry specific to animals, Flight, Swimming, Burrowing, Leaping, Claws/fangs, Strength/toughness, Growth/Shrinking, Super-senses (smell, taste, hearing, eagle eyesight, 360 degree vision, sonar, infrared vision, electroception)
Body alteration	Growing, Shrinking, Phasing or Intangibility, Air walking, Density Increase, Duplication, Regeneration, Enhanced Senses, Stretching or Malleability
Mental	Mind reading, Mental link, Mind control, Mental blast, Mind find, Possession, Telekinesis, Precognition
Phasing	Intangibility, Air walking, Enhanced senses, attack by phasing through things, disable electronics
Strength	Strength, Invulnerability, Leaping, Flight, Superbreath, Alternate form that gives strength, Density Increase, Immobility

A given power can show up in more than one theme. There are multiple ways of doing an energy blast: that was the whole point of going to effect-based powers. Here I'm trying to graft a cause back on to those.

Themes might possibly be the character types in the Mutants & Masterminds random character creation system. In Champions terms, everyone gets an elemental control and the ability to stunt within it for free.

This is totally untested, but I think it might work.

An unfocused rambling look at problem powers

SYSTEM: SUPERS! REd

There's a post on the Supers! board about problem powers, and since I can't get to the board from work, I thought I'd pontificate here.

My first thought, deliberately contrarian, is, "What problem powers?"

In one sense, the player chose it and you agreed to it, so there shouldn't be a problem. An attitude of letting everyone be excellent at something goes a long way toward this—everybody playing wants to be cool at some point, and they should. It's a superhero game, not a game of existential failure. So, yeah, in an ideal world, there would be no problem powers, and you see that in games where the powers are purely narrative.

At least, in some games all powers are equally the same amount of problem—the powers can be limited by the fictional reality more than the game mechanics (or the game mechanics refer to the fictional reality, I guess). Marvel Heroic Roleplaying approaches that kind of game, I think. So does Masks.

But it's not an ideal world. For Supers! and ICONS and Mutants & Masterminds and DC Heroes and so on, there can certainly be problem powers.

I think that problem powers are rare, but if you're in a problem situation, it won't seem that way. Problem powers are really a combination of things, because for some groups or some players, these problems aren't problems at all. It's an intersection of player, GM, character, and the way the power is written.

It seems to me, though, that the problems happen when this power wrecks the fun of players (including the GM). Some powers make things too easy in a way that the GM didn't anticipate; some powers destroy niche protection so that no other character is special; some powers have consequences that are just mind-blowing. This was suggested in the Supers! thread: what if a character with time travel wants to pop back in time to the beginning of the fight and change the conditions? I doubt you planned the fight with that in mind.

Off-hand, I can think of the following problem powers, in no particular order.

Time Control. Usually the base form (speed yourself up or slow others down) isn't too bad...it becomes a pain when you introduce time travel into the mix. What if someone wants to pop back two combat rounds and help himself? What a book-keeping pain.

Telepathy. It's really difficult to run any kind of mystery when the character can casually walk in and read minds. "Ah, Ozymandias killed the Comedian. Concentrate your search there."

Wizardry. How do you preserve any kind of niche protection when one character can do anything?

It's true too that some powers are fun-sucking when taken to the logical extreme. There's a lovely piece out there about how control of feces would be an incredible super power. Or the ability to speed up time on others is horrific if you limit it to chemical reactions, or grant them half the power of the Speed Force but not the "protects your body" part, so they rip themselves in two. Those would be problem powers.

The solutions or workarounds that I've heard of or used are:

• The power is off the table. This is the easiest for the GM to use. If the power+player combination is problematic, don't allow it. As Gerry Saracco said in the thread on the Supers! board, just because the power is in the book doesn't mean you have to allow it. This has the advantage that everyone sees it and everyone understands it. The disadvantages are that cool ideas from non-problem players can be dropped on the floor, or that you didn't know that the power was going to be a problem when you okayed the character.
• The power has limitations. This is the opposite tack and it can be applied retroactively. For some reason, the character can't do those game-breaking things. Steve Kenson has explicitly said this about Super-Speed in Mutants & Masterminds—the superfast character doesn't clean up the entire fight before anyone gets there because that's not the way things happen in the comics. It's a genre limitation.
• There are consequences to the action. Look, if the character casually scans minds, he or she is going to learn some unpleasant things about people, like what people really think of the PC or become the target of a shadowy conspiracy by learning something that was best kept hidden. The character is constantly blipping back in time to fix things? The timestream police come near and want to have a talk with the character...and they have specifically made themselves immune to his powers. (They've had eternity to research them.) Though I hate to use game mechanics for an in-game solution, you could take away a disadvantage (and its points) with the claim that it's entirely consistent with the character that he went back and fixed the problem in another timeline. (That last one seems kind of obnoxious to me, so I doubt I'd use it.)

It can be a very effective way to apply limitations by having the player create them. Say, "Using your timeshift power to travel back in time to the beginning of the fight is too tough for us to do. It's okay if you declare you're stunting duplication or something at the beginning of the fight, but suddenly saying, 'I go back and help myself' doesn't really work. What reason is consistent with what's already happened?"

Reasons could be the idea that you can go back in the past, you just can't be seen and change remembered history (he can timeshift, but he has to be careful not to be seen by the characters, so he puts the item they need in the potted plant...it's effectively a retcon, but the story is that he used his time powers), or it's very difficult to go in the past where you are, or the magic doesn't work that way.

Maybe the power only affects a certain mass, or volume, or the effects last only a turn (every power has a wreck-other's-fun rating that determines how long it lasts?) or it has side-effects that only show up a week later. It might not affect blue things, or green, or work in any room but the one where you did it previously.

If the player determines the reason, they're more likely to be happy with it.

In the meta sense, most people will change if you say, "Dude, you're wrecking everybody else's fun. Find a reason why that won't work." In the X-Men comics, Logan complained and complained about being on a team...but he stayed there. There was always a reason.  (If the player is still looking for ways to make you personally miserable after inventing a limitation, well, why are you playing with this person?)

On the bright side for the player, limitations might give the character more spotlight time. This is the Kryptonite rule: Whatever the character's weakness, it starts to show up much more often in the campaign. If your N-ray vision can't penetrate iridium, there's a lot more iridium in the world. Giving the GM a limitation is an invitation to create situations to your character.

As a GM, you have to be wary of the Kryptonite rule. And that leads to the last "workaround." Sometimes, the PC can just do it, because that's not what this adventure is about.

That's one of the big ones: If the character can do something, letting the character do it is fine, because the adventure is frequently about something else. If the character is super-strong, you never complain, "He lifted that car I put there and de-railed the entire adventure!" You put the car there to give him a chance to show off. If you need him not to move the car or rip the vault door open, then the car is attached to a bomb that will kill all the normals in the area if moved, or the vault door is made of Questonite, or something else.

As a GM, you're already used to thinking about when a power is important. My sense of consistency is such that I don't want a power that waffles in its abilities so I try to enforce consistency, but sometimes we hand-wave in order to get to the real story. ("Yeah, you can find rope in this barren warehouse and tie them up. Now the sigils on the floor tell you....")[1]

EDIT: I've gone back to this several times to try and clean up various sentences. Nothing major, but I do struggle to make this clearer. Partly, of course, because it's a jumbled mess of thinking.

1. I think it's Robinson Crusoe where the hero swims naked out to the shipwreck and then stores useful items in his pockets for the swim back. Revision was less common in the eighteenth century.

A Random Supers! Character

SYSTEM: SUPERS! RED

I decided I'd try a session the Mythic way, with no idea where it was going. After listening to the latest BAMF! podcast, I decided to use Supers! even though my character will be nowhere near as cool as the Goblin Ghost.

I'll put up the character first and then at some future date I'll put up an adventure.

Random character:
Origin (2d6): 2,3: Special Training (-3D powers, +2D resistances, +1D Aptitudes)
Resistances (8d6): 1,2,2, 3, 4,4,4,6:  One to add for player's choice, one for competency.
Composure: 3D
Fortitude: 2D
Reaction: 4D
Will: 2D
He's good. And the origin means I get to add 2 more. Let's make him a bit more strong-willed (3D) and increase his Fortitude a lot:
Composure: 3D
Fortitude: 4D
Reaction: 4D
Will: 3D

Aptitudes (5d6): 2. 3, 3, 4, 5--so ranks are 2D, 3D, 2D, and 2D. What are they, exactly? We'll skip the nominal first aptitude.
2,2 Aircraft
2,1 Vehicles
6,6 Survival
3,3 Investigation

Well, clearly he was on an around-the-world tour when his plane crashed and he had to learn how to survive, which made him tough tough tough. Let's say he can fight, for that extra D6 from his origin. If he had streetwise, I'd make it guns, but he clearly wasn't a criminal.

Aircraft: 2D
Fighting: 2D
Investigation: 2D
Survival: 2D
Vehicles: 3D

Power ranks (7d6): 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5
Powers would be
1D 3,6 Telekinesis
1D 3,6 Telekinesis
1D 5,4 Plant Control or Weather Control
3D 5,3 Invulnerability or Life Support
1D 1,1 Absorption

Well, his origin means that I have to get rid of 3D, so I'm dumping the first 3 powers. He has devices that grant him Invulnerability and Absorption. Since they're both devices, I can up each by a die. I think I'll put the 4D of Invulnerability as Piercing, so it's useful against bullets. It's clearly some kind of body armor.

Boosts (2d6): 5,2 both Lingering Effects and Persistent Damage don't really fit. He doesn't have enough dice for me to scarf one up for a Bashing Invulnerability.
Complications (2d6): 3,1 Well, we have devices. And 3,1 is Burnout, which seems appropriate for the Absorption device. So his powers become:
4D: Invulnerability (Device) Piercing
3D: Absorption (Device) Some kind of energy. Haven't thought of what, yet.

Advantages (2d6): 4,1 Attractive or Celebrity; I'll pick Celebrity, because...
Disadvantages (2d6): 4,5 Public ID

So I figure this guy is doing things in public as part of a payback thing: it's his public service. He gets the suit, but he's followed by cameras (and probably wears a body camera to make sure he doesn't do things.) If it's payback, maybe the crime he committed is connected to the vehicles/airplanes aptitudes. Heck, the investigation is probably training he got in order that he doesn't destroy evidence at a crime scene.

Since his vehicles and aircraft aptitudes are high, he wasn't really a criminal criminal; it wasn't his life's work (or he'd have streetwise). No, something like a DUI and wanton property destruction. And the judge, who has a sense of humor, sentenced him to public works. As a superhero. So the armor is painted in the city colors and has probably been tagged by graffiti artists.

He needs a municipal kind of name, or a name from the graffiti tag on his chest. Maybe he's officially known as Community Repayment Individual Municipal (pronounced CRIM), but people have taken to calling him Bad Boy, because that's one of the graffitos. Yes, Bad Boy is a good guy.

Bad Boy ID: Karl Shiner
Resistances
Composure: 3D
Fortitude: 4D
Reaction: 4D
Will: 3D
Aptitudes
Aircraft: 2D
Fighting: 2D
Investigation: 2D
Survival: 2D
Vehicles: 3D

Powers

3D Invulnerability (Device) Piercing
3D: Absorption (Device) Some kind of energy. Haven't thought of what, yet.

Advantages

Celebrity

Disadvantages

Public ID