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Q&A: Michael Miller
Michael Miller talks about With Great Power . . . a role-playing game that captures the essence of super-heroic stories
Learn more about With Great Power at the Incarnadine Press web site
Q: Superheroes have been one of the role-playing hobby's mainstays for years. What sets With Great Power... apart from so many superhero games? A: With Great Power... is focused squarely on telling superheroic tales. There are no tables to tell you whether your hero can bench press a tank or a battleship, there's no exhaustive list of every power known to man. Instead, there are challenging story issues that grab you by the lapels and don't let go.
Enough purple prose—superheroes in With Great Power... are defined by three to six Aspects. An Aspect is any discrete unit of story-stuff. A hero's secret identity could be an Aspect. So could his love interest, his long-destroyed home dimension, his vow to rid the streets of crime, or his ability to soar through the clouds. Mechanically, each one is equal. Your hero's story-driving Aspects—like relationships, origins, and personal convictions—are just as important as his powers and heroic trappings. Since Aspects are the only way a hero is defined in the system, they put story issues front-and-center.
But just having story issues on the character sheet aren't nearly enough to make story soar. Any good tale thrives on conflict. In With Great Power... when your hero's Aspects enter into conflict, they take on Suffering. Each Aspect has its own level of Suffering, which functions somewhat like an individual damage track. However, Suffering is unique in three ways:
First, the way Suffering manifests in a given Aspect is customized right when it happens. So increasing the Suffering of the hero's love interest might represent her being hit by a stray power blast in one scene, but in a later scene the same increase might manifest as her becoming offended at the hero for never being around when super villains attack. Suffering can represent any way that Aspects come under stress.
Second, in most cases, the player gets rewarded for increasing the Suffering of his Aspects. In my experience, anything that's penalized by a game system will be resisted by the players. Superheroic stories are always full of everything going wrong at the worst possible moment, so I needed to reward Suffering.
Third, the player is primarily responsible for making his Aspects Suffer. The game uses playing cards, and to get more cards, you need to increase the Suffering of one of your Aspects. Which one will it be? Do your powers flicker out for a moment? Are some of the citizens you've sworn to protect showered with falling debris? Does your hero-hating brother notice a corner of the cape beneath your coat? Or do you let the villain win the day? Whichever you choose, it will make a great story. And in With Great Power... , that choice belongs to the player.
Q: Let's get it out of the way. What's in a name? Is the title from the famous Spiderman legacy? Why did you go with that title?
A: Naming the game was a quest all on its own. For its first nine months, I refused to call it anything at all. It was simply "Untitled Superhero Game." I've always been extremely leery of working titles, since they have a tendency to stick around long after they've outlived their usefulness. And they're usually pretty bad.
I tried on a number of titles and had settled on "Excelsior!" as homage to Stan Lee. He used to sign his editorials with that. Things were building up toward the Preview Edition, and I had even scheduled a few sessions to run at GenCon with that title. Then, a very wise man (Paul Czege) said a very simple thing: "Are you sure that Marvel comics hasn't trademarked ‘Excelsior'?" I hadn't even thought to check!
As it turns out, Marvel had trademarked it. This was six weeks before GenCon, I was putting the Preview Edition together, and I was back to "Untitled Superhero Game!" Yikes! Luckily for me, I had one more playtest session scheduled. At that game, we kicked some ideas around, and Christopher Weeks came up with the excellent "With Great Power..."
I like "With Great Power..." a lot better, actually. It, of course, alludes to the moral of the Spiderman story. I think all the great superhero stories deal with that fundamental choice of trying to do the right thing. It also reminds players that the game, and the superhero genre in general, is about much more than just superpowers. It's about the duties and consequences that go along with that power.
Tell us where With Great Power... comes from. How did this all come together? What did you want to accomplish with this game?
At GenCon 2002, I was talking with Ron Edwards about the really well-done crop of superhero movies that had been coming out of Hollywood. He pointed out that there's a scene in Spider-man that instinctively makes everybody in the theater sit up in their seats, without a special effect in sight. It's where Aunt Mae slaps Norman Osborne's hand at Thanksgiving dinner—everybody knows that things are going to get very serious. Ron said "I want a superhero game where, at that moment, the numbers on everybody's character sheets change." On the ten-hour drive home from GenCon, that became like a puzzle for me.
In the months that followed, I tinkered with it over and over. I broke down what separated the great superheroes from the one-issue wonders. I reread the stories I had loved as a kid, and some of the ones I had completely forgotten about. I threw out four different resolution mechanics before I found the cards. I wanted a game where superheroes were played true to what I love about the genre—not for cheap laughs, not for escapist thrills, but for the dark, sweet, melodramatic tragedy of it all. I'm a sucker for tragedy.
Did your vision for the game change as you designed and received feedback? How so?
My vision of the game only shifted once during the whole design process. In general, the design-playtest-feedback cycle has been more of a gradual process of refining my original vision. Instead of my notes saying something vague like "I want the players to make an important decision about their Aspects at this point," they'd become more specific: "The players must choose between increasing the Suffering of an Aspect and losing the Page of conflict." I made some wrong turns, as well. Sometimes something that seemed promising in early playtests didn't do what the vision of the game demanded that it had to do. So that aspect of feedback is always helpful.
The one major shift in the vision was about the role of the Game Master. In both the Preview and Interim Edition, the specific duties of the GM are left extremely vague. I found myself saying "The players do X, Y, and Z. And the GM kinda handles the other stuff." I had defined the role of the GM negatively: She does what the players don't. And as playtests continued, I found the game increasingly more difficult and less enjoyable to GM.
I've finally come to understand that clearly defining the duties of the GM is vital to making the game understandable, playable, and enjoyable. I've tried to sweep away a lot of the traditional vestiges of what a superhero role-playing game "needs" to do. I now realize that one of those things is the idea that the GM is A) vaguely defined, because everyone is assumed to already know what a GM does, and B) primarily responsible for making the game enjoyable. With Great Power... is much more streamlined, now that the GM has more limited duties.
Did you find inspiration in other role-playing games or designs? What were those?
I suppose saying "Every game I've ever read" would be a cop out? <laughs> I think I can boil it down into a handful of Role-playing games and one card game as major influences. The minor influences are countless.
At its heart, With Great Power... is a game about trauma and empowerment, suffering and victory, price and power. You can't write a game about power and its price without being influenced by Ron Edwards' Sorcerer . With Great Power... sets up The Struggle before anything else for the same reason Sorcerer establishes Humanity right off the bat. The both serve to define the thematic foundation of play—What sort of issues will we be grappling with?
It seems to me that most superhero Role-playing games are trapped by their own task resolution systems. Under that paradigm, each game action, like rolling the dice, must match exactly one imaginary, in-game action. Since superheroic actions are so big and extravagant—they have to be, to make their metaphorical point—systems tend to focus completely on the scale of the actions. In the process, they lose the meaning. However, Mike Holmes' and Ralph Mazza's Universalis gave me the tools I needed to cut that particular Gordian Knot. In Universalis , a single die roll is not necessarily tied to a single in-game action. The interaction of the rules and the in-game happenings proceed in parallel, with interplay back and forth. But they're not in the lockstep that they would be under a task resolution system. In With Great Power... the rules handle the thematic meaning, while the description embroidered on top of those rules handles the grandiose explosions and pulse-pounding excitement.
I enjoy GMing Paul Czege's brilliant My Life with Master more than any other role-playing game. When I got to a point in the playtesting of With Great Power... that GMing the game ceased to be fun, my wife Kat suggested that I figure out what about My Life with Master I enjoy so much, and whether it could be used to enhance With Great Power... . As with most things, she was right. In My Life with Master , the players create a list of Wants and Needs that guides what the Master orders his minions to take from the townsfolk. In With Great Power... the players choose which one of their Aspects is vitally important for the villains' plans. The GM gets to figure out why the villains need it, but it has helped the direction of the game immensely.
I haven't played much Burning Wheel , but I was very impressed by the way Luke Crane has made his conflict system into a game-within-a-game. His scripting mechanics are very tight and generate fun just from the interaction of the rules. This broke through a prejudice that I've had for years: That role-playing game combat is slow, tedious, and boring. Once I saw that fighting in an role-playing game could be as exciting as fighting in a fast-paced card game, I knew that my superhero game also needed an exciting game-within-a-game conflict system.
I borrowed the concept of action scenes being broken down into panels and pages from the Marvel Universe Role-Playing Game , from Marvel Comics. Some parts of With Great Power... likely bear more resemblance to the original Marvel Super Heroes Role-Playing Game by Jeff Grubb than I care to admit. It was the first role-playing game I ever owned and I played it until its cover fell off. I'm sure its Karma system is embedded in the substrata of my brain. <laughs>
The card system I finally settled on was inspired by Reiner Knizia's card game Ivanhoe , now sadly out of print. It's a game about knights fighting in tournaments. Ironically, I didn't like the game very much at first, but my wife and a number of our friends are addicted to it. I watched them, trying to figure out where the fun was coming from. Like all game designers, when I figured out the secret, I greedily stole it for myself!
What about comic books or other media? Did any particular titles influence the game?
I've always been a Marvel comics guy. I read The Avengers , Uncanny X-men , New Mutants , and Captain America all through high school, plus whatever else my budget would allow. I even read the Complete Handbook to the Marvel Universe limited series from cover-to-cover. So the Stan Lee-inspired Silver Age angst is what I really love about superheroes: Superheroes as people with problems. They have these great gifts, but that doesn't really make their life any easier. I think that's why the classic Marvel stories have translated into such successful films lately.
Of course, Marvel hasn't cornered the market on superheroes as "people with problems." I watched a lot of the Buffy: the Vampire Slayer TV show while working on the game. I know a number of people that turn up their nose at the suggestion that Buffy be classified as a superhero story, but I don't think they have much ground to stand on. Secret identity? Check. Abilities beyond those of mortal men? Check. An obligation to stand against the forces of darkness? Check. Plenty of problems that all the power in the world won't solve? Check. Sounds like a superhero to me.
Tell us about how With Great Power... works. The game uses playing cards. How does that system work, and what do you think the playing cards do that dice can't?
Let me take the second part first. Role-playing games have barely scratched the surface of the potential of playing cards. All kinds of interesting choices can stem from just the interplay of rank and suit. Do the rules make a lower rank in a stronger suit better than a higher rank in a weaker suit? I see your games Dust Devils and Nine Worlds using that kind of choice to create exciting gameplay.
Personally, the thing that I like about cards is the interaction of the deck, the hand, and the playing area. In choosing cards from the deck, it's almost like rolling dice. You're not sure what you're going to get. As a game designer, I can put conditions on when and why you draw that might be similar to conditions that apply in dice-based games. But once the cards are in your hand, you know what they are, but nobody else does. That's a little thrill all of it's own. Games thrive on little thrills like that.
Since you also see what other people are playing, you usually know how you can respond to it before you have to. You can weigh your options more thoroughly. And the card you put down is your choice , succeed or fail. Also, since you know what the card is, and how it will interact with the other cards in play, simply playing your card becomes an area available for little bits of theatricality. You can snap down a paltry four in frustration or triumphantly reveal an ace with a flourish.
I could go on about discards, cards being played in combination, multiple and specialized decks, wilds, and the simple fact that cards are two-sided, for quite a while, but I'll stop there.
In With Great Power..., cards are used in two different resolution systems. In Enrichment scenes—scenes that show us why the heroes and their Aspects are important—the player and the GM compare one card drawn from their hand. The one with the higher card gets what they wanted in the scene, but the one with the lower card gets to take both cards into their hand. So there's an interesting choice there: Do I want my hero to get what he desires, or do I want an extra card for my hand?
In conflict scenes, the resolution becomes more complex. Just like in comic books, conflicts are broken down into panels and pages. A number of panels exist on each page of conflict, and each page has one set of Stakes: Will the villain kidnap an innocent bystander? Will the hero defuse the bomb in time? The player and the GM play panels, back-and-forth, until one of them is forced to yield the conflict. Each panel consists of two things: 1) a description of what the hero (or villain) is doing to achieve (or hinder) that page's Stakes, and 2) a single card played to the page to represent that action. But the card you play will guide what type of action you can describe.
For instance, let's say that the GM has played an eight of hearts for her panel and said "Mudslide pummels you with his mighty fist." I now have four possible ways to respond to this.
First, I could escalate the conflict by playing a heart of a higher rank. This would mean I was accepting the GM's proposed action, and adding a bigger action of the same type. It's like saying "Yes, and..." as in "Yes, Mudslide hits me, and I shake my head for a moment, then give him a vicious roundhouse to his gooey midsection!"
Second, since the game uses multiple decks of cards, I might have an eight of hearts in my hand. If I do—or if I have a wild—I can play it to cancel the GM's card. This would also cancel her proposed action. This is like saying "Oh, no you don't!" Plus, I'd get to steal a card from the GM's hand.
Third, I could play two cards of a different suit in order to change the suit. If I played a six and a jack of spades, the jack would be discarded as the price I pay to change the suit, and the GM would now have to beat the six of spades. But changing the suit requires me to also change the type of conflict. In this case, I'd be changing it from punching to dodging, or to grappling, or to using my powers, or to changing target, or to something else entirely, as long as it's different. It's like saying "Yes, but..." as in "Yes, Mudslide hits me, but even as his fist connects, I envelope my body in the heat of seven suns, drying his muddy fist to a fine powder."
Finally, I could yield. If I don't have the cards to respond to the eight of hearts in one of these three ways, I have to let the GM win the fight. It's like saying "You win, for now." In addition to winning the Stakes, the GM gets to make one of my Aspects Suffer and steal cards from my hand, so yielding means I definitely lose in the short-term. But, by yielding, I also have the opportunity to take away some of the GM's long-term advantages, so even failure has its silver lining.
What about The Struggle? That seems to be the fulcrum of the game and the kinds of play and stories players create with it. Tell us about it.
The way I see it, one of the most fundamental things that make superheroes distinctive is that they have their feet in two worlds. They have a secret identity and a duty to protect the world. They come from strange, exotic place and they live among normal people. They can do feats beyond imagination and they have fears and doubts just like the rest of us. This whole uncertainty is vital to the melodrama.
In With Great Power... this fundamental thematic conflict is expressed as The Struggle, which is the first thing that the group decides on when they start to play. All the heroes will have the same Struggle for a specific story—it's the reason why they're all in the same story.
The Struggle is expressed as a pair of opposed principles, such as "Responsibility versus Freedom," or "Ideals versus Practicality," or "Justice versus Vengeance." Each of a hero's Aspects will align with one side or another. Which Aspects the player chooses to make suffer will say something about how his hero handles The Struggle.
Villains are created from the same Struggle as the heroes. However, villains are different from heroes in that they no longer Struggle. They've chosen one side and closed themselves off from any alternatives. In that sense, villains are thematic dead-ends. They never question themselves or their actions. On the other hand, they serve to highlight the dangers that resolving the Struggle might pose.
What is With Great Power... like in play? Tell us about what kinds of experiences do the people playing this game find remarkable?
I've had a number of players comment that it's great to see the story issues right on the character sheet. I've been running different Role-playing games at game conventions for seven years now, and one of the things I've noticed is that when people are at a loss for what to do next, they look at their character sheet to guide them. If there's a long list of combat skills and weapons, they'll probably attack something. In With Great Power... , if they see that they can get cards for bringing their long-lost father into play, they'll probably do that.
As I said earlier, cards enable a great deal of theatricality during play. People catch onto the rules pretty quickly, and once they do, everyone knows which cards are good to play and which cards are bad. I love it when one person plays a card for their panel, doesn't say a word, and everyone at the table looks at it and does a low "ooooh" because they know things are going to get good. That happens at least once in every With Great Power... game I run these days.
The one part of the game that you've got to see in action in order to believe how well it works is the Thought Balloon. The way I see it, one of the cool things about comics as a medium of communication is that you can show what a character is thinking just as easily as you can show what he's saying. You just put the words in a thought balloon rather than a word balloon. There are lots of times in playing With Great Power... when you need to show what your hero is thinking. The Thought Balloon itself is just a picture of a comic book-style thought balloon mounted on a handle. You just grab it and hold it over your head and say "She can't possibly know that I'm The Stalwart in my secret identity... Can she?" or whatever your hero is thinking. It may sound cumbersome and silly when described, but, I assure you, it works like magic at the table.
You released With Great Power... in a printed Preview Edition for GenCon 2004. What will the official release be like, and when can we expect to see it?
As I haven't gotten the art or laid out the text yet, I'm not certain of the final page count, but I estimate it'll probably come in at 96 or 112 pages. There will be complete rules for creating heroes and villains; how to use them in Enrichment scenes and Conflict scenes; discussions and examples of following the Story Arc through play; and firm guidelines on how to GM the game. The game will have as much art as I can afford, as befits a superhero game. I'm a big fan of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics , and I hope to be able to include only pieces that McCloud would consider "comics." That is, I plan to have all the art in the game be sets of panels, rather than isolated images. This will also help in teaching the game rules.
The "when" is easy: GenCon 2005. Indianapolis is a super city, I'll bring the superheroes.
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