Capes & Masks RPG System

Why did I make Capes And Masks RPG system?

A friend of mine came to me asking if I knew a system which would be good for their first time as a GM, and could effectively model the superhero movies we both loved. The thing that they were most concerned with was balancing the power levels of the players. She wanted a simple system where it would make sense to have a player playing a character like Shazam alongside a character like Hawkeye. She wanted to give the players complete creative freedom to create any character they chose, whilst it still made mechanical sense.

I tried to think, but at the time I couldn't think of a system that I liked that didn't have strange things like awkward point-buy or strange distortions of the superpowers people wanted to play with, one that allowed for full creative freedom.

The puzzle stuck with me, and it kept buzzing around my head until I thought of a solution: the best way to model powers in an RPG system, is that you don't. Instead, you model the narrative way superheroes use their powers to solve problems. I set about rewatching every superhero movie I could find and wrote notes on how these characters found solutions to the problems they faced. Those notes were refined, and eventually became this simple system. I added some ideas and inspiration from some of the very innovative GMless RPG/Storytelling games and it was basically finished.

At some point during the design, play-test and refining process it became obvious that with a rule tweak (namely helping with the choice of stats) this game could not only be suitable for a rules-lite system for adult fans of the genre, but could also work really well with children. It would make a great first RPG game to start teaching children some of the basics of RPGs. And they would get to play as their favourite superheroes too, and or invent their own, the sky being the limit.
I couldn't believe nobody had already taken the name "capes and masks"...

I tried to keep the system as simple as possible. Originally, I was trying to keep it to one page, but in the end I realised that it was actually less complicated to make it a bit longer, so it grew to roughly 10 pages long. The reasoning behind this is that I wanted a fun game that people could learn in about ten minutes, and get onto playing from nothing in as short a time as possible. I also made it a 2D6 system so that it could be picked up and played by anyone, as pretty much everyone can raid an old boardgame box to grab 2D6, a few bits of paper and some imagination, and you're good to go for thrilling superhero stories at your kitchen table.

A level 1 module called "Parabola" is currently available, which would also serve as a great practical example of how to run the system.