Do People Actually Like Superhero RPGs?

And other fun questions to ask yourself at 3AM...

Art by Steve Epting, Marvel Comics

Last month, the YouTuber Bob World Builder, who makes content primarily focusing on Dungeons & Dragons and other heroic fantasy TTRPGs, put out a poll asking people what their favourite TTRPGs were. The initial selection consisted of 140 games, but once the poll was finished, with 30,000 votes cast in total, the write-ins brought the total number of games up to 831!

In his latest video on the results of the poll, Bob noted the general trend of his own audience being predominantly men in their mid-twenties to early forties who play fantasy RPGs. Just so we have a semblance of the audience we’re dealing with here. The overwhelming majority of Bob’s audience also play D&D and Pathfinder.

That said, of the 831 games on the final list, 21 of them were superhero games, which is about 2.53% of the total. Marvel Multiverse was among the options and, rather surprisingly to me, it came out on top of the 21 superhero games with 101 votes. Curious as to how the final tally among the superhero games shook out, I went through Bob’s data (which you can find here) and did some analyses of my own.

Now, myself and FuzzyOnTheDetails both shared the poll to our audiences, him on YouTube and me through the Marvel Multiverse Facebook group, which obviously skew far toward the MMRPG player base. I was much more curious to see how votes might pan out in general, so I shared the poll in the “World of Supers RPGs” Facebook group as well. My post there got no likes nor comments. So, I have absolutely no idea if anybody saw it; never mind followed the link and voted. For some context, it’s a group with 5,000 members and an average of 8 daily posts, so it’s not like I shared it into a ghost town. Although it is full of AI-generated artwork and videos of conspiracy theorists talking about aliens, hidden technology and lost history for the sake of campaign inspiration.

Needless to say, I am no longer a member of this group.

What I posted in World of Supers RPGs

In stark contrast, both my post and Fuzzy’s post on YouTube had at least some degree of interaction, with people commenting to confirm that they had gone and voted on the poll. The Marvel Multiverse group is of a similar size to World of Supers, with 4.5k members and about the same number of daily posts as well.

Mine and Fuzzy's community posts

With the general notes about the potential voter base out of the way, let’s take a look at how the data actually came out in the end:

Superhero Games Tally

• Aberrant - 1 Vote

• City of Mist - 65 Votes

• DC Heroes - 4 Votes

• FIST - 17 Votes

• HERO System / Champions - 60 Votes

• Heroes in Capes! - 1 Vote

• Heroes Unlimited - 1 Vote

• HEROIC - 5 Votes

• ICONS: Superpowered Roleplaying - 1 Vote

• Indominant - 7 Votes

• Marvel Multiverse - 101 Votes

• Marvel Superheroes / FASERIP - 6 Votes

• Masks: A New Generation - 42 Votes

• Mutants & Masterminds - 64 Votes

• Paragons: The Roleplaying Game - 1 Vote

• Prowlers & Paragons - 8 Votes

• Sentinel Comics - 13 Votes

• Silver Age Sentinels - 1 Vote

• Smallville - 1 Vote

• Villains & Vigilantes - 5 Votes

• Wild Talents - 1 Vote

These were all the specific superhero games on the list, based on my knowledge of the genre and my keen Googling skills. In total, they account for 405 of the 30,000 votes cast, which is 1.35% of the overall voter base. I will reiterate again here that this is a predominantly fantasy-gaming audience, and specifically a Dungeons & Dragons 5E / 5.5E audience. I mean, that’s true of basically any random sample size of TTRPG players, really.

However, I’m also aware that there are more generic game systems that have popular superhero supplements, and so when accounting for those, we get these three systems emerging:

Systems w/ Popular Superhero Supplements

• Cypher System - 167 Votes

• Outgunned - 34 Votes

• Savage Worlds - 433 Votes

Both Cypher System and Savage Worlds are generic systems with a litany of supplements and only one major superhero supplement each; namely Claim the Sky and Savage Worlds: Superpowered respectively. Given that there are also fantasy supplements for those systems and Bob’s audience is predominantly interested in fantasy games, I’m not going to try and parse how many of the votes those games got might have been people whose favourite TTRPG is a superhero game. Savage Worlds even came in at 11th overall, where the other 10 games above it were majoratively fantasy games.

However, Outgunned only has two supplements besides the base game, with one being a superhero supplement, and none being fantasy-themed. Outgunned: Superheroes is a recent release and was instantly popular due to its emulation of the MCU, so I’ll go ahead and say that 12 (about a third of 34) of the votes for Outgunned were probably people whose favourite RPG is Outgunned: Superheroes. So, adding in Outgunned: Superheroes brings us up to 417 votes for superhero RPGs. That’s 1.39% of the 30,000 voter total! Being optimistic about the ratio of people voting for Cypher System and Savage Worlds who were voting because of Claim the Sky or SW: Superpowered, I’d say the overall percentage of people who voted in this poll whose favourite RPG is a superhero RPG is about 1.5%. That’s 450 people.

With that accounted for, here’s the ranking of the superhero games from Bob’s poll.

Superhero Games Ranked by Total Vote Count

1. Marvel Multiverse (101 Votes)

2. City of Mist (65 Votes)

3. Mutants & Masterminds (64 Votes)

4. Champions / HERO System (60 Votes)

5. Masks: A New Generation (42 Votes)

6. FIST (17 Votes)

7. Sentinel Comics (13 Votes)

8. Outgunned: Superheroes (12 Votes approx.)

9. Prowlers & Paragons (8 Votes)

10. Indominant (7 Votes)

11. Marvel Superheroes / FASERIP (6 Votes)

12. HEROIC and Villains & Vigilantes (5 Votes each)

13. DC Heroes (4 Votes)

All the remaining games got 1 vote each.

It’s an interesting spread. Obviously MMRPG has come out on top as a result of an active community who are quite clearly more willing to engage with the broader TTRPG space than other communities seem to be. However, it’s also the youngest of the game systems in the top five, and the only one besides M&M with a new release on the horizon to boot. Then there’s City of Mist and Masks in the top 5 too, which is likely due to their being Powered by the Apocalypse games. That system also has a loyal and vocal community that, if the two games were lumped together as PbtA superhero games, would actually beat Marvel Multiverse with 107 votes in total. Lastly, Champions and Mutants & Masterminds are the stalwart longstanding superhero games within the TTRPG space, so it’s no surprise seeing them up so high. They also provide much more involved character creation than the PbtA games and MMRPG, where I would say MMRPG is the middle ground between the two pairs. So, there’s a good representation of versatility in styles of play among the top 5.

The gap between the top 5 and the remaining games though is where I’m most surprised. I would have expected to see a more consistent spread of votes, but there is a significant separation between 5th and 6th place. Looking at the games outside the top 5, a number of different qualities can be assigned to various of them to explain why they’re there. The one thing I think most, if not all, of those games have in common are simplified character creation mechanics. But beyond that the primary problem would probably be a lack of availability. Most of those games are out-of-print or have lapsed licenses so can’t have more supplementary material published in an official capacity, or they’re reliant on print-on-demand services or digital purchases. As such, there are several games there that are reliant on homebrew materials and fan-driven reworkings. Heck, even HEROIC is just an updated FASERIP ruleset.

So, if a sample of 30,000 TTRPG players contains only 417 people whose favourite TTRPG is a superhero game, then are superhero games even that well-liked by the broader TTRPG community?

Of course they are. Because we all play more than one game. I don’t doubt that if that poll had made the option to give your own top five games that there would be a much more substantial turnout for the superhero genre. But like I said earlier, I think that the closer a game is to the present day, the less traction it tends to have with players. Superhero stories are often fundamentally tied to the era in which they’re being created, so they’re almost exclusively geared toward playing in the modern day and not an ancient lost civilisation of fantastical magic or a future apocalyptic wasteland.

Superhero RPGs have been around since 1977, basically developing tangentially alongside the fantasy games like D&D. In my experience, superhero games are almost always the next port of call for a TTRPG player once they’ve gotten to grips with fantasy games. And that tracks with the history of the hobby.

So, if you’re one of the 1.5% of people whose favourite TTRPG is a superhero game, then rejoice! You’re part of one of the longest-standing traditions in the culture of TTRPGs. And not only that, but both DC and Marvel are about to be fully back in the gaming space once the Justice League Unlimited RPG hits its Kickstarter goals, and we’ve got another edition of Mutants & Masterminds coming down the pipeline too. All the heavy hitters are on the scene again!

Superhero games may well be on the verge of a renaissance not unlike the Old School Renaissance we’ve been seeing with games like Shadowdark and Old School Essentials gaining popularity.

Whether that renaissance would see the superhero genre rise to the heights of horror games like Call of Cthulu or Vampire: the Masquerade is another conversation entirely. Because outside of the truly niche games that exist in a bubble all of their own, superhero games really do seem to be the lowest rung on the “popular TTRPG genre” ladder, being outpaced by sci-fi, horror, and fantasy in that order.

Oh, and in case you were wondering: Marvel Multiverse came in 46th overall. Not bad on a list of 831 options.

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Well, sorry for the delay in today’s post! I rescheduled what would have been today’s article just so I could write this and get it out as quickly as possible. Bob World Builder only posted the final tallies for everything yesterday so I spent a short while going over all of his data last night and working out the various totals and percentages before going to bed. Hopefully you’ve appreciated the presentation! And if your favourite RPG wasn’t on any of the lists anywhere, then be sure to let me know about it in the comments.

Till next time, stay safe, and have fun out there!